SINGAPORE (June 11): The market has reacted positively to the rise of a new single-largest shareholder at CSE Global, a systems integrator in the oil and gas and public infrastructure sectors. On April 13, Serba Dinamik International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Malaysian O&G and energy solutions provider Serba Dinamik Holdings, emerged with a 24.8% stake in CSE. It had acquired the stake from eight shareholders at a 15% premium to the previous day’s closing price. CSE’s shares, which plunged by more than a third after the oil slump in 2014, are up 7% following Serba’s entry.

Serba provides engineering solutions for the O&G and power generation industries. It has operational facilities in Malaysia, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the UK. It also has a presence in other Middle Eastern markets such as Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait, as well as in Central Asia and Africa. About 86% of its FY2017 revenue came from the operations and maintentance segment. It became a vendor to Malaysia’s state-owned O&G company Petronas in 1997.

On its part, CSE sees Serba’s entry as a mutually beneficial one, says Lim Boon Kheng, CSE group managing director. Asked about his initial reaction to Serba’s accumulation of a stake, Lim says: “We are a listed company and cannot control who becomes our shareholder. We don’t have a dominant shareholder who owns half the company. We have many funds and other stakeholders, and we view Serba no differently. But, of course, having a fund has its own advantage and having a strategic [shareholder] has its own advantage. We don’t prefer one over the other.”

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