Global Sources made offer for InfoCom trade shows

In a 54-page circular submitted to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 14th February, Sage International revealed that Global Sources offered them HK$6 million for their exhibition assets. (See pages 8, 9 and 24.) Sage claims that the offer was received on 7th February 2011 - after Global Sources first expressed an interest in Sage's exhibition portfolio as early as May 2010.

Sage (formerly Info Communication) is instead opting to sell its exhibition business back to the founder of those exhibitions, Eddie Leung, for just HK$3 million. Sage offers a number of reasons for selling to Leung instead of taking Global Sources' higher offer all of which boil down to: it would be too much trouble, effort and expense to take the higher offer.

Infosky (Sage's subsidiary which operates its exhibition business) posted revenues of HK$47.8 million and a net profit of HK$2.4 million for the year-ended 31 March 2010.

Leung has done pretty nicely on this transactions as he seems to have sold his stake in InfoComm in October 2007 for HK$55.2 million. (At least we think that is what happened. You would have to be a forensic accountant to wade through all of these filings.)

The management of Sage International best hope well-known, Hong Kong-based shareholder activist David Webb doesn't decide to have a look at these string of transactions - in which minority shareholders have not fared so well.

Some of our other posts on Info Communication's woes can be found here.