Good interest in Saadi Cement stake

Pakistan: Several companies have shown interest in buying 51 per cent stake in Saadi Cement Ltd to help the company to run commercially. Faysal Bank Ltd, the financial adviser of the cement company, by Monday last has received a number of expressions of interest to buy the stake in the company. Three companies have shown interest and are expected to become potential buyers of Saadi Cement. They said that serious contenders are AKD Securities, Arif Habib Co, and Siddiq Sons. The break-up value of the units ranges between Rs 27 and Rs 28 per share. The company is under trial production as of June 30, 2003. Saadi’s assets stood at Rs 8.1 billion while the outstanding loan against the company was around Rsd 5.6 billion. The company has dry process line with annual capacity of 1.48Mt cement. The company’s major shareholder is Pakland cement, with 80 million shares invested at Rs 10 each.

Pakland holding in Saadi Cement is 43 percent but the financial institutions are selling 51 percent to the new bidder. Faysal Commercial Bank is handling the sell-off transaction on behalf of various financial institutions. A few years back, Saadi’s financial restructuring was completed and, according to the scheme of arrangement, terms finance certificates were issued against the loans of nearly of 89 lenders, which were approved by the financial institutions and were, sanctioned Sindh High Court. According to that scheme an executive committee was constituted to facilitate the monitoring and operational affairs of the company.