EXPRESS KENYA PLC

XPRS chief executive Hector Diniz has received the green light to raise his ownership of the company to slightly over 70 percent after shareholders approved a plan to convert Sh80 million debt owed to his companies into shares. The shareholders backed the plan through a unanimous 68-member vote at an extra-ordinary general meeting Thursday. The move will now see Mr Diniz —through his two firms — issued with nearly 12.31 million new shares at a price of Sh6.50 each. This will be achieved through conversion of Sh42 million debt that the loss-making firm owes Airport Trade Centre Ltd (ATCL) and another Sh38 million loan to Diniz Holdings Ltd into shares. “The members present and in person and by proxy and eligible to vote unanimously by show of hands without any dissent passed a resolution to convert a debt of Sh42 million and Sh38 million owed by the company to Airport Trade Centre Limited and Diniz Holdings Limited respectively to equity,” said the firm in a regulatory notice yesterday. Mr Diniz, who already controls a 61.64 percent stake in the clearing and forwarding, warehousing and logistics services firm, failed in a bid last year to buy out 38.36 per cent equity held by minority shareholders. A section of the company’s significant shareholders rejected the CEO’s offer after it emerged that the struggling firm was worth much more based on the value of its 15.7 acre land in Nairobi’s Industrial Area. The new transaction, which will give him an additional 10 per cent stake, had earlier been cleared by the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) in May this year. Mr Diniz, in his failed bid to fully acquire the company and delist it from the Nairobi bourse, had made an offer of Sh5.50 per share. This had been accepted by shareholders with 9.78 per cent equity, bringing their total stake to 71.42 per cent, but fell short of the 75 percent minimum regulatory threshold for such a transaction.