Bursa Malaysia welcomes first business trust listing

KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia Bhd welcomed the listing of Business Trusts (BT), an alternative listing structure that facilitates capital raising by listed entities seeking an initial public offering (IPO) on Bursa Malaysia.

This was demonstrated by the debut listing of Prolintas Infra BT, marking the first BT listed on the exchange’s Main Market, and a Shariah-compliant BT, earlier today.

In statement, Bursa Malaysia said BT is a hybrid investment structure that blends the features of both an investment trust and a company, introduced under the Securities Commission Malaysia’s (SC) Business Trusts Guidelines (BT Guidelines) 2012.

“Essentially, it operates as a unit trust scheme established by a trust deed, wherein a trustee-manager oversees the operation and management of the scheme’s assets.

“Unit holders in a BT have the opportunity to share in the profits or income generated by these assets through distributions declared by the trustee-manager,” it added.

Bursa Malaysia said a significant advantage of a BT is that dividend distributions can be made to investors from its operating cash flow, without being constrained by conventional accounting profits.

“Therefore, it is anticipated that a BT will be more attractive for business assets that are capital intensive but with stable cash flows – among others such as those in the infrastructure, telecommunications, and energy sectors, which support key national growth policies and roadmaps,” it said.

Bursa Malaysia chief executive officer Datuk Muhamad Umar Swift said BTs provide a novel listing structure to raise capital that can facilitate development in the economy by making infrastructure-type projects more accessible to a broader range of investors, fostering growth and innovation across more capital intensive sectors.

“The introduction of the BT model expands the breadth of Malaysia’s capital market and demonstrates the capital market regulators’ earnestness in providing facilitative frameworks and solutions.

“This development will augment the ability of the exchange to play its role in facilitating growth plans of listed issuers to benefit our economy at large,” he said. – Bernama