AEL gifts Rs 3b shares to employees

Access Engineering Limited (AEL), the holding company of the Access Group has gifted three billion rupees worth of shares to its employees.

The 120 million shares (15 percent out of entire 800 million shares) which were priced at Rs. 25 each were earlier held by the three directors of the company - Chairman/Managing Director Sumal Perera, Joint Managing Director Christopher Joshua, and Director Ranjan Gomez.

AEL plans to be listed in the Colombo Stock Exchange in the latter part of this year or early 2012.

The company successfully concluded a Rs. 4.5 billion private placement by offering Rs. 180 million shares to corporates and high net worth investors recently, each at Rs. 25.

"Even though this is called a gift of shares, in another sense this is not a gift. This is the way we say thank you to those who worked hard to bring AEL to the place it is today. This is also an incentive for those who are already working for the company to commit to do their work even better," Sumal Perera said.

He also said that this is the first time a company in Sri Lanka has gifted its shares to its employees at zero cost. The company hopes to appoint three new directors to its board in preparation for the upcoming Initial Public Offering.