Ashford W. Meikle, Staff Reporter 
Janett Stewart
TWO MAJOR directors of betting and gaming company, Supreme Ventures Limited (SVL), have apparently reduced their personal stockholdings in the company when, on Friday, some 1,136,093,564 shares with a total value of just over $3 billion was traded across the floor at the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE).
The trade was at $2.68 but at the end of the day Supreme closed at $2.50. But while the particulars of the transaction are sketchy, it appears that cash was not exchanged in the deal.
"It was a cross transfer ... and NCB Capital Markets was the broker for both parties," a source, who requested anonymity, told Sunday Business. "Apparently the large shareholders transferred the shares to themselves within another entity, most likely a company," the contact elaborated.
TRANCHES OF SHARES
The transaction, which was done in two separate tranches of 568,046,782 shares, represents some 43 per cent of the company's stockholding and suggests that the two largest shareholders, directors Janette Stewart and Paul Hoo, have diluted a significant portion of their personal stockholdings. Prior to the transaction both Hoo and Stewart each controlled 32 per cent of the company or about 856.4 million shares separately.
Recently-listed on the Jamaica Stock Exchange, Supreme Ventures raised some $1.85 billion in its private placement last July which was oversubscribed when high net worth individuals in Trinidad and Jamaica eagerly snapped up the shares.
However, by the time its initial public offering opening (IPO) came to the market last January, investors, recovering from the eight per cent decline in the JSE in 2005 and unsure about the pricing of the shares (which was based on future earnings), were lukewarm to the offer
The IPO, with an offer price of $4.81 and which sought to raise $600 million from the 125 million shares, representing just about 4.73 per cent of the company, was a disappointment. With only 36.6 per cent of the offer taken up even after the IPO was extended it managed to raise just over $220 million. With the IPO undersubscribed, NCB Capital Markets, the underwriter and lead broker for the offer had to shell out $380 million to take up the remaining 79 million stock units.
Almost immediately upon listing on the exchange in February, the share began to plunge and has never traded above its IPO price. In fact, Friday's trade represents a 48 per cent decline on the IPO price.
With the transfer, of the 1.1 billion shares, Hoo and Stewart's personal, direct stockholding have been reduced with each holdings about $288 million shares each, or just about 11 per cent putting them in the company of the next biggest individual shareholder and director, Ian Levy, who holds about 302 million shares, or about 11.4 per cent of SVL's stockholding.
At the of trading day the main JSE Index gained 660.30 points to close at 85,108.22 points.
