NLB to Issue Fresh Shares at EUR 307

Ljubljana, 28 August

Slovenia's biggest bank, NLB, published a prospectus on a new share issue on Tuesday as part of a planned capital increase. The 325,733 new shares are being offered at EUR 307 per share, while the bank's share capital will increase by EUR 2.719m to EUR 66.831m.

The newly-issued shares will be first offered to the existing shareholders. If these do not fully use their preemptive rights between 4 and 17 September, the available new shares will be offered to other prospective investors. The preemptive right corresponding to their stakes in the nominal capital of NLB goes to those shareholders who were registered in the share registry on 22 August, i.e. the day that the Securities Market Agency cleared the prospectus.
The biggest shareholders of NLB are the state (35.41%), Belgian banking group KBC (34%), the state-run Restitution Fund (5.05%) and Pension Fund Management (5.01%), and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (5%).
According to NLB, all those shareholders who hold more than 5% plan to use the preemptive right in order to retain the relative size of their existing stakes.
The new shares that will not be paid-up by the existing shareholders within a fortnight will be offered to other prospective buyers. A call to that effect will be published within two working days after the deadline, whereupon investors will have 16 days to buy the available shares.
New shares will be paid in cash. The public sale will be considered successful if all NLB shares are paid up by the fixed deadlines. If this is not the case, NLB will return the money paid in to all investors within 15 days.
NLB also says in today's notice that trading on the organised market is not foreseen. The subject of the public sale is 325,733 new ordinary shares, which will be issued in non-tangible form. The selling price of all fresh shares is a little over EUR 100m.
The bank has decided for capital injection after it has used all resources to finance additional capital for expansion in operations, new capital investments, the implementation of planned acquisition of banks and in order to ensure capital adequacy, including in relation to the impact of Basel II. The injection was endorsed by the shareholders' meeting in 2004, when the management was put in charge of increasing the bank's share capital with the consent of the supervisory board. The management took the decision to that effect in May, while the supervisory board gave its stamp of approval in June.

NLB to Issue Fresh Shares at EUR 307

More articles from this issue:

Archive