As a result of market rumors concerning Rezidor's largest shareholder, HNA Tourism Group Co., Ltd. ("HNA Tourism Group"), and its rumored sale of a large number of Rezidor shares, Rezidor has received the following information from HNA Tourism Group, which Rezidor has decided to disclose through this press release in order to clarify the information about HNA Tourism Group's ownership since it differs from the information that could be obtained from the shareholder register maintained by Euroclear Sweden.
"HNA Tourism Group currently owns 119,567,553 shares, corresponding to 70.4 per cent of the shares in Rezidor.[1] HNA Tourism Group has entered into a loan agreement with a lender, under which 10,600,000 of HNA Tourism Group's shares in Rezidor have been pledged as security for the loan. Pursuant to the loan agreement, the pledged shares have been transferred to the lender's securities account. Under the loan agreement, the lender is not entitled to exercise the voting rights for the pledged Rezidor shares. The shares will be returned to HNA Tourism Group when the loan has been fully repaid.
Under Swedish law, when a lender undertakes not to exercise the voting rights of the shares provided as security, the shares are not counted towards the lender's holdings, but continue to be counted towards the shareholder's holdings. As a result, there is no notification obligation (Sw. flaggningsskyldighet) in this case, neither for the lender holding the security nor for the shareholder.
In conjunction with the assessment of this particular case, HNA Tourism Group has received advice from its Swedish legal counsel that no notification obligation is necessary, following confirmation obtained by counsel from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority supporting this analysis.
HNA Tourism Group may enter into agreements with the lender, or any other party, which may involve pledging more Rezidor shares."
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For further requests please contact:
The Rezidor Hotel Group
Knut Kleiven, Deputy President & CFO
knut.kleiven@rezidor.com (mailto:knut.kleiven@rezidor.com)
HNA Tourism Group
Sard Verbinnen & Co
Elizabeth Smith
esmith@SARDVERB.com (mailto:esmith@SARDVERB.com)
This is information that Rezidor is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person set out above, on 15 December 2017 at 16.20 CET.
[1] Calculated on the total number of outstanding shares (171,166,316). Rezidor holds 3,222,541 treasury shares.
The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.
Source: Rezidor Hotel Group via Globenewswire
