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Joseph Lo

Jardine Matheson has put on hold its plan to list information-technology (IT) consulting arm Jardine OneSolution (JOS) on Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing.

'We often review the possibility of taking Jardine [companies] public, and we did review, in some depth, taking JOS public during [last year],' managing director Percy Weatherall said yesterday.

'However, we took the downturn in the value of shares in the IT and e-commerce sector in the second half of the year into consideration also.

'Because of this, we are no longer pursuing a listing for JOS.'

Nonetheless, Mr Weatherall said that Jardine could reconsider its position if market conditions improved.

'Clearly, market conditions would be the driver behind that,' he said.

However, no definitive date could be set for when that might occur.

'I am not one to predict what stock markets might be thinking about technology companies in three, four, or five years' time,' Mr Weatherall said.

JOS, which employs about 2,800 people, is probably Hong Kong's largest home-grown IT consulting company, accounting for more than 50 per cent

of the SAR Government's system outsourcing work.

Despite the failure to spin off JOS, Mr Weatherall said that the group's confidence in Hong Kong remained strong.

The managing director declined to comment on whether it would return its public listings to the Hong Kong stock exchange soon.

Jardines moved the bulk of its publicly-traded entities to Singapore in the mid-1990s after failing to secure preferential protection in Hong Kong's corporate takeover code in the run-up to the handover.

Mr Weatherall also denied that Hong Kong supermarket chain Wellcome, a unit of Jardine subsidiary Dairy Farm, was for sale.

'The Jardines Group intends to stay fully invested in Hong Kong,' he said.

Mr Weatherall said the renaming of the JOS Tower was the first of many such moves this year that would raise the Jardines profile locally.

Had Jardine OneSolution been able to list, it would have done so on the Hong Kong bourse, said JOS chief executive Steve Lo.

'We started this company in Hong Kong, we are based here, and 70 per cent of our revenues are locally derived,' Mr Lo said.

'So if we list, it will be in Hong Kong.'



Jardine OneSolution listing plan on hold