KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 23): Berjaya Assets Bhd (BAssets) has raised its stake in 7-Eleven Malaysia Holdings Bhd further to 5.59% from 4.63% after buying 10.7 million shares or a 0.96% stake for RM16.84 million.

The shares were bought via its wholly-owned Sublime Cartel Sdn Bhd, between Jan 11 and 22 this year, according to its Bursa Malaysia filing today.

This came after BAssets announced on Jan 11 that it had upped its stake in 7-Eleven to 4.63% after buying a 0.34% stake from the open market at an average price of RM1.54 per share or RM5.72 million in all.

Yesterday, in response to a report by The Edge Malaysia that the company was looking into privatising the convenience store chain, its board of directors said the company was not aware of any proposal in respect of such a plan.

In its filing today, BAssets said Sublime Cartel bought 709,200 7-Eleven shares via the open market for about RM1.09 million or at an average RM1.54 per share, and another 10 million 7-Eleven shares via direct business transactions (DBTs) for RM15.75 million or about RM1.58 per share.

While the open market purchases were done based on the prevailing market prices of the shares at the time of the acquisitions, the DBTs purchase price were agreed on after considering the five-day volume weighted average market price up to and including Jan 15, 2018 of RM1.53 per share.

With the latest acquisitions, it now holds 62.09 million 7-Eleven shares.

Berjaya Corp Bhd founder and executive chairman Tan Sri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun is a major shareholder of BAssets and retail convenient chain 7-Eleven, while his children Chryseis Tan Sheik Ling and Morvin Tan U-Jiang are executive directors of BAssets.

The acquisitions were funded by BAssets' internal funds.

BAssets shares closed unchanged at 43 sen for a market capitalisation of RM1.1 billion while 7-Eleven shares dipped four sen or 2.56% to RM1.52 valuing the company at RM1.68 billion.