29/3/06 KUALA LUMPUR (Bernama) -- Kulim (Malaysia) Bhd's recent victory in the Court of Appeal for the contentious 12.2 percent stake in its subsidiary QSR Brands Bhd may prompt the diversified palm oil group to quickly call for an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) to remove the current directors of QSR.

This was the view of an analyst who considered the move as the next logical step for Kulim now that it has the 12.2 percent voting rights reinstituted, giving the company a total of over 52 percent stake in QSR.

QSR at the moment has only nine directors following the departures of Datuk Johari Abdul Ghani, Datuk Hilmi Abdul Rashid, Datuk Karim Marzuki and Datuk Seri Syed Amir Abidin Jamalullail on Jan 1, 2006.

"Kulim must exercise its majority shareholding rights and, once and for all, remove directors that oppose its presence in the company since recent actions have not met with any response," the analyst told Bernama Wednesday.

He said that removal of the directors would clear Kulim's path to directly control the country's largest fast food group, KFC Holdings Bhd, in which QSR holds a 32.5 percent stake.

Kulim recently sent a formal request to the QSR board for eight board seats and made known that it does not back the proposed 10 percent private placement of QSR's new shares.

QSR, however, pressed ahead with its plans for the private placement, prompting the parent company to place an injunction to block the action of its subsidiary.

To date, the proposed private placement has been suspended by the court.

Kulim has to date invested about RM438 million for the over 52 percent stake in QSR, which included the purchase of 19.6 percent of QSR shares from Wisdom Innovative Technology and a mandatory general offer that expired Dec 12, 2005.

-- BERNAMA