[2008-08-04]  Vision rights issue closes this week
Trading of The New Vision share rights will close on Thursday after which non-shareholders will be unable to buy rights on the Uganda Securities Exchange (USE).

Shareholders will have up to August 13 to take up their share rights, but after trading ends on Thursday, they will be unable to trade their rights on the USE.

If they cannot afford to buy the rights, they will be passed onto shareholders who may have subscribed for more shares than they were entitled to.

Trading on the exchange opened on July 10 and there are only three trading sessions left - Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

“For shareholders, their time is running out to either exercise their rights to buy their rights or to sell their rights on the USE.

“By keeping quiet, they will be throwing away money they could have earned by selling their rights,” Gervase Ndyanabo, the company secretary, said.

“People who are not yet shareholders still have time to buy the rights.”

He warned people against waiting until Thursday to take action to avoid missing out.

The New Vision offered shareholders rights to buy a new share for every two shares they own at the heavily discounted price of sh1,100 to the current market price of sh2,510.

The sh28.5b raised from the issuing of the 25.2 million shares will be used by the company to expand its printing capacity, open a TV station, widen the coverage of the radio stations and build a new office block.

By the end of July, more than 19 million of the rights had been traded on the exchange, bringing in about sh22b, a USE report showed.

Source: © Copyright The New Vision 2000-2008.