Dairy Farm International has spent US$190 million to maintain its 19.99 per cent shareholding in Yonghui Superstores by acquiring a further 286,934,440 shares.
Completed by its wholly owned subsidiary The Dairy Farm Company, the acquisition is alongside online retailer JD.com acquiring a 10 per cent stake as well as Yonghui chairman Zhang Xuansong taking a 2 per cent interest.
While it was announced in August last year, the Dairy Farm acquisition has been subject to regulatory approval. The deal has now been completed, with the number of shares subscribed by Dairy Farm adjusted from the amount originally announced to take into account a bonus issue of shares made by Yonghui in June.
Yonghui is a Shanghai-listed hypermarket and supermarket group based in Fuzhou, Fujian province. As at March 31, Yonghui had 412 retail outlets across China.
The Dairy Farm group, together with its associates and joint ventures, has about 6500 retail outlets across Asia including supermarkets, hypermarkets, convenience stores, health and beauty stores, home furnishings stores and restaurants. It employs more than 180,000 people, and had total annual sales exceeding US$17 billion last year.