By Al Edwards, Business Co-ordinatorLIFE OF Jamaica has made an offer to all the ordinary shareholders of Island Life Insurance Company Limited (Island Life) to acquire all the issued ordinary shares of Island Life.
The offer, announced on Monday, November 25, is open for three weeks and will close on December 16, 2002. The Offer is by way of an exchange of shares whereby LOJ will issue three new ordinary stock units in the share capital of Life of Jamaica Limited to each Accepting Shareholder in exchange for each one ordinary stock unit in Island Life transferred to LOJ by the Accepting Shareholder.
The Board of Directors of Life of Jamaica Limited (LOJ) says the exchange ratio of three LOJ shares for each share in Island Life is based on valuations done on LOJ and Island Life by PricewaterhouseCoopers and a valuation on Island Life completed by KPMG.
The Board also engaged Standard & Poor's Corporate Value Consulting (S&P CVC) to render their opinion regarding the fairness of the Offer, from a financial point of view. Their opinion, concluding that the Offer Price is fair to LOJ and the stockholders in Island Life, forms part of the Offer document and should be read in its entirety.
The parent company of LOJ and Island Life, Barbados Mutual Life Assurance Society, had announced its intention to merge the operation of LOJ and Island Life when it purchased the majority interest in LOJ one year ago. The offer from LOJ to the ordinary shareholders in Island Life is an important step in facilitating the merger process.
This latest decision comes as a result of an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) convened in October of this year to increase the authorised share capital from $1,225million to $1.35 million by increasing the number of J$0.10 ordinary shares from 1,656,248,955 to 3,000,000,000.
Last week, president and chief executive officer of LoJ, Maxine MacLure announced unaudited consolidated results for the nine month period ended September 30,2002 which shows the company recorded profits before extraordinary item for the period of $369 million.
