By Elena Fabrichnaya<\/p>\n
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s second-largest lender, VTB, said on Friday it planned to raise up to 84.7 billion roubles ($1.02 billion) in its latest additional share issue, pricing the placement at 67 roubles per share.<\/p>\n
The bank decided to place 1.264 billion ordinary shares, which equates to nearly 24% of the overall shares of that type, in a secondary public offering (SPO), marking the largest equity market transaction in Russia since 2023 when VTB raised a similar amount.<\/p>\n
The amount raised is at the lower end of VTB’s target range of 80 billion to 100 billion roubles, as the lender seeks to boost its capital adequacy ratio.<\/p>\n
The placement price reflects a 7% discount to the maximum price of 71.9 roubles set at the close of the book-building process, upon which VTB had promised investors a discount. The 7% discount aligns with analysts’ expectations of 5% to 10%.<\/p>\n
“The placement below market value naturally puts pressure on share prices,” analysts at brokerage Tsifra said. “However, for the bank itself, this is a step towards increasing stability and capital.”<\/p>\n
VTB shares were down 1.6% at 12:07 p.m. local time (0907 GMT) on Friday, trading at 70.64 roubles.<\/p>\n
Fund manager Sergey Pirogov of Heroi Asset Management described the pricing as “good for investors, unfavourable for shareholders.”<\/p>\n
The SPO will reduce the Russian state’s controlling stake to 50% plus one share, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev said, leaving more than 49% of ordinary shares in free float.<\/p>\n
The exact number of shares sold will be disclosed after payments are completed.<\/p>\n
Retail investors were allocated about 41% of the offering, while institutional investors took 59%.<\/p>\n
The book-building process ran from Tuesday to Thursday, with VTB reporting interest exceeding 180 billion roubles from retail and institutional investors.<\/p>\n
VTB said the transaction highlights the potential for raising capital on the domestic stock market based solely on demand from Russian investors.<\/p>\n
($1 = 83.1500 roubles)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Robert Harvey; Editing by Joe Bavier)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Elena Fabrichnaya MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s second-largest lender, VTB, said on Friday it planned to raise up to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[73050,148273,332,148272],"class_list":{"0":"post-437675","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-institutional-investors","9":"tag-market-transaction","10":"tag-russia","11":"tag-vtb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115234650372246444","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}