Ann: Redflow undertakes capital raising to deliver on growth, page-57

No - they couldn't try a book build without SH approval as they 1/ need to dilute so much and 2/ they've already used a lot of their allowance for past 12 months. Given the dilution, an entitlement offer was likely their only option.

Note, the time they spent in a trading halt would have been to try and convince existing major shareholders to state that they would participate (as say Hacket has done/stated in the past). No success on that front tho.