Capital Markets, Listed Entities & M&A

Temporary Exemption to Allow Electronic Dissemination of Offer Documents for Rights Issues and Take-over or Merger Transactions

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, restrictions imposed on the operations and manpower of printers and mailing houses have posed challenges to the mass production of hard copy documents including documents in relation to rights issues and take-over or merger transactions. Various laws and rules require hard copies of these documents to be despatched.

In response, on 6 May 2020, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Securities Industry Council and the Singapore Exchange Regulation jointly announced temporary measures giving issuers listed on SGX-ST and parties involved in rights issues and take-over or merger transactions the option to disseminate an electronic version of the relevant offer documents through publication on SGXNET and their corporate websites.

These temporary measures take effect from 6 May 2020 to 30 September 2020.

This Update highlights the conditions for relying on the temporary measures.