Perennial Says It Made an Offer for United Engineers

Perennial Real Estate Holdings Ltd. (40S.SG) said Thursday it has submitted a proposal for fellow Singapore-listed builder United Engineers Ltd. (U04.SG), without giving details about its bid.

United Engineers said this morning its controlling shareholders, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. (O39.SG) and its insurance arm, Great Eastern Holdings Ltd., were evaluating proposals from several parties regarding their combined stake in the company. United Engineers didn't disclose details about the parties that had made offers.

OCBC and Great Eastern together own about 36% of United Engineers and have been looking to sell their stake since 2014.

Perennial was responding to a query from Singapore Exchange after its shares surged as much as 8.2% on Thursday. The company said there is no certainty of a transaction and that it had made an offer as part of a consortium.

Any deal to buy a stake of at least 30% in a listed company will trigger a mandatory open offer for all shares of the firm, according to Singapore's takeover rules. United Engineers has a market capitalization of 1.75 billion Singapore dollars (US$1.27 billion).

Write to Gaurav Raghuvanshi at gaurav.raghuvanshi@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 01, 2017 04:39 ET (08:39 GMT)