The country’s largest privately held insurance provider Ceylinco Insurance PLC announced that it has complied with the listing rules governing its employee share option scheme.

Ceylinco Insurance Share Option Trust (CIESOT) was the single largest shareholder of Ceylinco with a 22.86 percent shareholding until May this year.
However, listing rules were brought in stipulating that a share option scheme could only own 5 percent of the equity of a listed company, while an individual employee could own only 1 percent of the shares through such a scheme.

CIESOT divested 10.98 percent or 2.2 million shares for Rs. 3.5 billion in May, and divested another 11.65 percent of its shareholding in the latter part of September.

“As at 30/09/2015, CIESOT holds 46,435 voting shares which is 0.23 percent of the issued share capital,” the company statement said.

It said that these remaining shares will be sold and funds allocated to qualifying employees once they have opened Central Depository System accounts.
The company had issued deeds of ownership of shares to its current and past employees who were entitled to CIESOT privileges, with the intention of compensating the employees for the shares sold.

However, for the shares divested in May, only the current employees of Ceylinco were believed to have been compensated, which had worried former employees. 
(CW)