Lamurep Investments acquires further stake in Sunshine Holdings, investing Rs. 1 billion

By Hiran H.Senewiratne

Lamurep Investments Ltd. last week invested nearly Rs. 1 billion to acquire a further stake in Sunshine Holdings PLC. Lamurep, being the major shareholder of the company, previously held a 51.09 percent stake in Sunshine and last week picked up a further 8.38 per cent, thereby increasing its holding to 59.47 per cent.

It bought 30.13 million shares at Rs. 26.60 each and a further quantity of 7.5 million shares at Rs. 25.50 apiece in a total deal worth Rs. 991 million, stock market analysts said.

A technical glitch marred the CSE transition to Delivery Versus Payment (DVP) settlement best practice, delaying trading and eventually impacting investor sentiment. It took the stock market 45 minutes to commence trading. However, amid those developments the market bounced back somewhat yesterday and will take a few days to fully recover, stock market analysts said.

Both indices moved upwards. The All Share Price Index went up by 224 points and S and P SL20 rose by 56.67 points. Turnover stood at Rs. 2.9 billion with a single crossing. The crossing took place in Unisyst Engineering PLC, which crossed 27.6 million shares to the tune of Rs. 250 million, with a share price of Rs. 9.10.

In the retail market five companies that mainly contributed to the turnover were, Expolanka Rs. 869 million (10.3 million shares traded), LOLC Finance Rs. 212 million (27.7 million shares traded), LOLC Holdings Rs. 194 million (430,000 shares traded), Commercial Leasing Rs. 119 million (11.3 million shares traded) and JKH Rs. 88 million (665,000 shares traded). During the day 158 million share volumes changed hands in 27500 transactions. During the day LOLC Group and Expolanka were major contributors to the All Share Price Index.