Teem Foundation, a former timber trader and now Macau high-stakes gambling junket investor, is selling new shares worth HK$427.4 million to acquire an undetermined stake in a VIP gaming junket that will take high rollers to the new Venetian casino resort on Macau's Cotai Strip.
Teem will sell 161.28 million new shares in a placement at HK$2.65 each, an 11.1 per cent discount to their closing price on Thursday.
The shares represent 16.75 per cent of the firm's existing share capital and 14.35 per cent of its enlarged capitalisation. Bear Stearns is the placing agent.
Yesterday's announcement of the placement came a day after Teem said that it had signed a memorandum of understanding to take an indirect stake in profits from the private VIP rooms held by a gambling junket attached to 'a hotel on the Cotai Strip'.
The announcement did not identify the junket or name the hotel. Teem chairman Richard Lum said in April he was targeting a deal to secure interest in a junket at Las Vegas Sands Corp's US$2.4 billion Venetian, which will open next month with 850 gaming tables as the first big resort on the Cotai Strip and will be the world's largest casino by number of tables.
Teem did not say how many gaming tables the new Venetian junket would control. The price and size of its interest in the junket are subject to further negotiation, according to the stock exchange announcement.
Teem has expanded aggressively into Macau's high-stakes gaming segment, paying HK$1.3 billion in two separate deals starting in September last year for control of two junkets that take high-rollers to the Sands and Wynn casinos.