In late 2006 Fraser & Neave F&N, the historical Singapore food and beverages company controlled by the Overseas Chinese Banking Corp OCBC group, issued new shares amounting to approximately 15% of its shareholder equity, to Temasek, the deep pocketed Singapore Government investment holding company, at $4.38 a share. In the following year Lee Hsien Yang, the second son of former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, brother of current prime minister Lee Hsien Loong and previously CEO of Singapore Telecom, one of the largest companies controlled by Temasek, was appointed the new Chairman of F&N.
To all appearance, the events indicate a long term move by Singapore Inc to keep a firm hold on this venerable local icon. Few would expect in 2007 that within 6 years the company would be split up, with its beer subsidiary taken over by Dutch company Heineken and its food and beverages operation and property holdings going to TCC Assets, owned by Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi.
In fact, F&N was "in play" since July 2010 when Temasek, less than 4 years after investing in F&N, sold its shares to Kirin, a Japanese brewery, for $6.50 a share. In other words, Temasek's investment in F&N was not a strategic move to hold it long term but just a tactical step to make a quick profit. Prior to this, it was assumed that Temasek and OCBC would act in concert and their total shareholding of over 40% would make F&N takeover proof, as the price a raider would need to pay to persuade 50+% of shareholders to agree to sell, out of a free float of under 60%, would be very high. Once the 15% holding transferred from Temasek to Kirin, the assumption was no longer valid, and it was possible for an interested party to try to obtain the holding of either OCBC or Kirin first before reaching for a majority stake from the remaining shareholdings.
In July 2012 parties associated with Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, individuals as well as companies, managed to buy the OCBC and subsidiaries' shareholdings in both F&N and Asia Pacific Brewery its beer subsidiary, at $8.88 and $45 per share respectively, both very attractive prices at the time compared to recent trades on stock market. The news quickly brought Heineken into fray - it had a major stake in APB and was not happy to see an old partner replaced by a new one. After various possibilities were raised over several weeks, the two sides agreed that the Thai side would sell its newly acquired APB shares to Heineken (with profit) and not oppose Heineken's buying out the remaining shareholders, while in return Heineken agreed not to mount a competing takeover of F&N.
Unconfirmed reports have it that Heineken was offered first refusal to buy the F&N and APB shares from the OCBC side but was unwilling to take the whole package at the prices suggested, before the Thais clinched the deal. In the end it had to pay a higher price for APB shares but avoided the additional outlay to buy the F&N stake, which would have resulted in it being just a minority F&N shareholder or in having to incur further outlay to gain control of F&N..
For a while the market wondered whether Kirin would mount a competing takeover for F&N or simply sell its stake to TCC, or whether a local property company might mount an offer to get hold of F&N's real estate assets before selling the food and beverages business when nothing happened there, the F&N board invited the Indonesian Lippo group, through its local hotel and property subsidiary Overseas Union Enterprises, to compete. Eventually TCC upped its offer and most shareholders agreed to sell out at $9.55 and Lippo dropped out declaring that it would be too expensive to compete. I assume the OCBC guys, in hindsight, were left wondering why they did not manage to extract the higher prices for F&N and APB.
After gaining control, TCC had various options about what to do with F&N's numerous assets, including a huge cash hoard from selling its APB shares to Heineken. First there was a cash distribution, partially returning to TCC money it used to buy F&N. It then decided to spin off the property holdings of F&N as a separate entity Frasers Centrepoint Limited (Centrepoint is a popular shopping centre owned by the company and a number of other real estate holdings were already separately listed as Frasers Centrepoint Trust and Frasers Commercial Trust), so that TCC would hold the two operations under separate boards of directors with relevant experiences for the respective businesses. Later the property arm was renamed Frasers Property. "Neave" exited the Singapore market.