Agos­ti­ni Group Ltd has for­mal­ly closed its takeover bid for Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd af­ter se­cur­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 96.8 per cent of the com­pa­ny’s is­sued and out­stand­ing shares, po­si­tion­ing the con­glom­er­ate to take con­trol of the restau­rant and food ser­vices op­er­a­tor.

In a ma­te­r­i­al change no­tice dat­ed June 23, Agos­ti­ni said the of­fer, which was launched on June 17, 2025, closed on June 23, 2026. The trans­ac­tion in­volved a share swap un­der which Pres­tige share­hold­ers were of­fered one Agos­ti­ni share for every 4.8 Pres­tige shares ten­dered.

The com­pa­ny said share­hold­ers rep­re­sent­ing about 96.8 per cent of Pres­tige’s is­sued and out­stand­ing shares ac­cept­ed the of­fer.

Com­ple­tion of the trans­ac­tion, in­clud­ing the ex­change of Pres­tige shares for Agos­ti­ni shares, is ex­pect­ed with­in ten days of the bid’s clo­sure. Once the set­tle­ment is com­plet­ed, Agos­ti­ni will be deemed to have ob­tained a con­trol­ling share­hold­ing in Pres­tige Hold­ings.

Agos­ti­ni said it will not pro­ceed with a com­pul­so­ry ac­qui­si­tion, com­mon­ly known as a “squeeze out,” of the re­main­ing mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers be­cause the statu­to­ry time­frame un­der the Com­pa­nies Act for ex­er­cis­ing those rights has ex­pired.

The com­pa­ny said it is as­sess­ing op­tions re­gard­ing the re­main­ing mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ing and will pro­vide fur­ther up­dates when ap­pro­pri­ate.

The com­ple­tion of the takeover comes af­ter months of un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the ap­proval process linked to the ap­point­ment of the board of the Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (FTC). The FTC was on­ly con­sti­tut­ed in April, fol­low­ing a ten-month de­lay that drew crit­i­cism from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

At­tor­ney Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal, act­ing for busi­ness­man Wen­dell Ever­s­ley and led by Se­nior Coun­sel Stu­art Young, sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter threat­en­ing ju­di­cial re­view pro­ceed­ings against the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism over the de­lay.

The ab­sence of a func­tion­ing com­mis­sion stalled sev­er­al trans­ac­tions re­quir­ing com­pe­ti­tion over­sight, in­clud­ing Agos­ti­ni’s ac­qui­si­tion of Pres­tige Hold­ings. The takeover had al­ready se­cured over­whelm­ing share­hold­er sup­port but re­mained sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry clear­ance, with the com­mis­sion un­ap­point­ed.

With the FTC now op­er­a­tional and share­hold­er ap­proval se­cured, Agos­ti­ni has moved to com­plete one of the largest cor­po­rate trans­ac­tions on the lo­cal stock mar­ket in re­cent years.

Busi­ness­man Chris­t­ian Mout­tet is chair­man of both Agos­ti­ni and Pres­tige Hold­ings.