By Dipo Olowookere
One of the top healthcare companies in Nigeria, May & Baker Plc, is considering selling off or leasing out its facilities at Sapara Street, Ikeja, Lagos to free up capital that could be reinvested into the business.
However, before this is done, shareholders of the firm will have to give the board the power to do so. This is one of the decisions the shareholders would be making tomorrow as the company holds its Annual General Meeting (AGM).
May & Baker head office and manufacturing facility at Sapara Street, Ikeja, had become grossly underutilised after the healthcare company relocated its manufacturing operations to its World Health Organisation (WHO)-standard plant in Ota, Ogun State.
Recently, federal government partnered with May & Baker to establish Biovaccines Nigeria Limited, a company mandated to produce local vaccines to save Nigeria a huge part of more than N10 billion yearly expenditure on vaccine importation, with such savings directly flowing to Biovaccines Nigeria Limited.
May & Baker holds 51 percent equity stake in Biovaccines Nigeria Limited, while Federal Government controls the remaining 49 percent.
In addition to the resolution on the sale of its assets, the shareholders will tomorrow also pass special resolutions to empower the board to increase the authorised share capital from N1.9 billion of 3.8 billion ordinary shares of 50 kobo each to N3 billion of 6 billion ordinary shares of 50 kobo each.
Recall that in 2014, shareholders had empowered the company to raise N3.2 billion new equity capital. However, the exercise was delayed in order to extract the greatest value for the existing shareholders that had toiled to build the company and to ensure that new equity investments were in line with the strategic vision of future expansion and technical competences.
Adedapo Adesanya 
Aduragbemi Omiyale