The price of Shin Corp Plc shares stopped sliding yesterday after investors'  fears subsided that Temasek Holdings' takeover bid would be aborted in light of mass public protests against the deal and companies formerly linked to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

When the closing bell rang with no move by Temasek to cancel its tender offer, the takeover became a done deal. Those who had tendered their Shin Corp shares to the Singaporean government agency will be paid next Tuesday.

Alarmed that the pressure against the offer would lead to its cancellation, investors dumped Shin shares over the past few days, driving the stock down 9.27 per cent this week. Yesterday, it closed at Bt44, unchanged from the previous day but off considerably from Friday's Bt48.50.

Financial executives told The Straits Times that Temasek was pushing ahead with the acquisition of additional shares as required under Thai corporate law.

A Temasek official said the investment agency was expected to announce details of its tender offer on Tuesday, effectively quashing local rumours that Temasek might cancel the tender due to escalating political tensions.

"We are proceeding with the tender offer as required by Thai law. The tender offer will end at 4.30pm today," the official told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity.

Opponents of Thaksin had urged Singapore to scrap the Shin deal and vowed to stage a protest in front of the Singaporean Embassy. They also called for the boycott of nearly 100 companies linked to Thaksin.

Greg Pau, an analyst at Standard and Poor's rating agency, said it was "a commercial decision at this point".

After the purchase of a 49.6-per-cent stake in Shin from the Shinawatra and Damapong families on January 23, Temasek launched the tender offer for the remaining 50.4 per cent at the price of Bt49.25, which was 12 per cent above yesterday's closing.

The offer was open for 25 days, from February 2 to yesterday, while the payment date is set for March 14.

As of March 2, 486.29 million shares had been tendered, representing 16.2 per cent of Shin's outstanding shares. Including the 1.49 billion shares - or 49.6 per cent - that Aspen and Cedar bought from the two families in January, the buyers' combined ownership will be 1.94 billion shares - or 65.8 per cent.

According to the Temasek official, the final number of shares tendered would be released on Tuesday.

Following the transaction, groups from a number of quarters have called for Thaksin's resignation on the grounds the he now lacks legitimacy to rule. As the opposition intensified over the last seven weeks, speculation mounted that Temasek would jettison the tender offer. If Temasek backed away from the deal, Shin's stock price would likely have plummeted, because the Bt49.25 tender offer price is 16 times more than the company's prospective earnings per share, a relatively high ratio for Thailand. Investors this week unloaded their shares in panic, hoping to lock in profits before further declines.

Korn Chatikavanij, the Democrat Party's deputy leader, said that while Shin's stock had fallen, the Stock Exchange of Thailand and the Securities and Exchange Commission had not demanded that Shin or Temasek clarify the deal.

"Investors incurred damages as they deserted the stock on the rumour at a price below the tender offer price. The SET and the SEC are bound to provide an explanation to minimise investment risks," Korn said.

Suthichai Chitvanich, the SET's executive vice president, said that the bourse maintained its silence during the tender period in the belief that investors had been sufficiently informed.

"The exchange will no longer question this issue. We don't know what to ask. Investors are the ones who know best as the issue has been reported daily," he said.

Temasek, wholly owned by the Singapore government, began an aggressive re-balancing of its portfolio almost three years ago.

On Wednesday it bought a 9.9-per-cent stake in Tata Teleservices Ltd in India, marking its second major investment in the Tata group, one of India's largest conglomerates.

Yesterday, via wholly-owned subsidiary Seletar Investments, it added a 9.9-per-cent stake in i-Logistics Corp, a unit of Japan's Itochu Corp in a deal said to be worth US$14 million (Bt550 million).

In January, three days after buying the original stake in  Shin, Temasek-unit PSA International announced that the board of London-based P&O had accepted its bid to purchase the port giant. Dubai-based port operator DP World submitted a counter bid that was considerably higher and consequently accepted.