Update | TVB shares rise to 11-month high on takeover offer by China’s TLG
Little-known TLG has made an 11th-hour takeover offer to thwart the HK$4.2 billion plan by TVB’s controlling shareholders to tighten their grip on Hong Kong’s main free-to-air terrestrial broadcaster
Shares in Hong Kong’s main free-to-air terrestrial television broadcaster TVB rose to an 11-month high, triggered by an announcement that the company had received an unsolicited “conditional cash partial takeover offer” on Wednesday night.
The 11th-hour offer by little-known TLG Movie and Entertainment Group, is to buy a 29.9 per cent stake of Television Broadcasts, in a move that could disrupt the two-week-old share buy-back plan aimed at strengthening the existing shareholders’ hands on the network.
“The market has reacted with mild enthusiasm as there are still a lot of uncertainties surrounding the buyer’s financial conditions and whether this deal will come true in the end, ” said Ronald Wan, chief executive for Hong Kong-based Partners Capital International.
TVB shares rose as much as 5.9 per cent to an intraday high of HK$31.40 before settling 3.2 per cent ahead at HK$30.60, the highest level since March last year. As many as 1.64 million shares changed hands, almost triple their daily average in the past year.
Hong Kong-incorporated TLG is part of Beijing-based Top Legend Group, which calls itself an investor in real estate, entertainment and media.
TLG was interested in TVB’s intellectual property and had been in contact with the 49-year-old broadcaster since 2007 to acquire its trove of films, sitcoms and archival footage, the company’s founder and chief executive Alex Chow (周藝強) said in a telephone interview with the South China Morning Post.