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KUALA LUMPUR (March 27): The Employees Provident Fund (EPF), the largest shareholder in IJM Corp Bhd (KL:IJM), voluntarily abstained from voting on the takeover offer by Sunway Bhd (KL:SUNWAY) for the construction group.
“EPF voluntarily abstained from voting in view of EPF holdings shares in both Sunway and IJM,” read an announcement on the EPF website.
On Thursday, 99.27% of Sunway shareholders’ votes approved the 10:90 cash-and-share deal at the extraordinary general meeting.
EPF chief executive officer Ahmad Zulqarnain Onn had earlier in February told the media that the retirement fund would wait for the independent advice circular (IAC) before deciding on whether to accept the offer by Sunway.
The IAC was subsequently released on March 13 to IJM shareholders, where M&A Securities Sdn Bhd said that the offer is not fair and not reasonable.
In the IAC, M&A Securities pegged a sum-of-parts (SOP) value of between RM5.84 and RM6.48 per IJM share, meaning that the RM3.15 per share offered by Sunway represents a discount of between 46.1% and 51.4%. It also pegged IJM’s net assets at RM2.93 per share as at end-2025, indicating that the offer is a premium of only 7.5% to IJM’s net assets per share.
The investment banking outfit advised the board to recommend that shareholders reject the offer, while also recommending that shareholders reject the offer.
EPF is the largest shareholder in IJM with 20.523% stake in the group and also owns 9.73% stake in Sunway.
To recap, Sunway offered to take over IJM in a cash-and-share deal, which it said values the property-to-highway construction and infrastructure group at RM3.15 per share or RM11 billion.
IJM shares closed 5.06% or 12 sen higher at RM2.49 on Friday, giving the group a market capitalisation of RM9.08 billion. Year to date, the stock has gained 9.3%.
Meanwhile, Sunway’s share price closed up eight sen or 1.53% to RM5.31, bringing the group's market capitalisation to RM36.14 billion.
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