Jiayuan’s biggest shareholder has put forward a plan to buy the remaining shares of the company, in a move that would see China’s largest online dating company go private.
The company’s board received the plan from Vast Profit Holdings Limited, who propose a “going-private” transaction.
This would see Vast Profit acquire the rest of Jiayuan’s outstanding shares from current shareholders.
In the letter, dated 3rd March, Vast Profit said they will buy shares at $5.36 per American Depositary Share, or $3.58 per ordinary share.
The Caymen Islands-based group has already privately agreed to buy 8,003,763 ordinary shares – 19.6% of the company’s total outstanding shares – from Aprilsky, a subsidiary owned by Pangu Trust, whose settlor is Jiayuan founder Haiyan (Rose) Gong.
With this purchase on 2nd March, the company have announced that Ms Gong has resigned as director of the company, and will no longer hold the position of co-chairman of the board.
Vast Profit say in the letter to shareholders that they are offering “the same purchase price as that in our recently completed share acquisition”, which was $3.58 per ordinary share.
If Vast Profit bought Aprilsky’s over 8m shares at this price, it would make the total cost over $28.7m.
They now expect to acquire the remaining 1,805,126 by 15th March.
By offering the same price for these outstanding shares, the cost would be $6.5m.
See the letter to the Jiayuan board here.