Talam ... Jan10

It is on track to emerge from its PN17 status, even as its debt regularisation plan was being delayed by prolonged negotiations on assets disposal.

Talam Corp Bhd, which had completed its financial regularisation plan, hopes to emerge from the Practice Note 17 status soon.

All financial instruments, which were part of its regularisation plan, had been issued. It will now submit the application to Bursa Malaysia for the uplifting the PN17 status. From the feedback they have from its meeting with Bursa 's representative, they are quite confident it will be successful.

As part of the revamp, the company had issued redeeemable convertible preference shares 2009/2014. The additional 60.13 million new shares arising from the conversion of the preference shares were listed on July 23 2009.

Other divestment plans to pare down the company borrowings, such as disposal of properties and land are ongoing. Talam is looking at disposing more than 3,000 acres of land, from its current total land bank of around 7,000 acres. The majority land to be disposed will be from the company's Bandar Bukit Beruntung developement.

After the completion of asset and land disposals, the company will have almost no gearing, and can start anew. Talam has around RM700 million in total borrowings, including outstanding irredeemable convertible unsecured loan stocks of more than RM300 million.

Talam will now focus on completing its outstanding projects, and aims to achieve at least 95% completion rate by the end of the year (2009).

There will be no new property launches by Talam this year (2009), but will start some of the joint venture projects such as Sierra Ukay, Sierra Selayang and Ukay Perdana next year. These projects have a combined gross development value of more than RM1.4 billion.