Overwhelming offers for NBG
Bank bailout fund HFSF confirmed on Thursday the sale of 22% of the share capital of National Bank, out of the total 40.39% currently held by the state, after the unprecedented sum of offers observed in the private placement, with the sale oversubscribed by more than eight times.
The offers collected amounted to 8.5 billion euros, as a result of which the fund increased the number of shares it made available from 182,943,031 to 201,237,334 in total, while setting a threshold on Thursday morning for accepting offers at €5.30 per share, in comparison to the price range that had been announced and which varied between €5 and €5.44 per share.
Investors in the Greek public offering must subscribe at the maximum price. It should be noted that high participation was already recorded on the first day the bid book opened (November 14), with bids exceeding €6 billion, pushing the price for subscriptions to the private placement close to the upper price range.
That way, the discount was limited in relation to the current price of National Bank (the stock closed at €5.78 per share on Thursday), on the basis of which the shares were made available through the bookbuilding process, which also discounts a lower price compared to that of the dashboard.
The participation in the private placement of large institutional investors abroad was overwhelmingly high, as well as the participation of private and special investors (institutionals) in Greece.
The fact that hedge funds received only 4% of the amount they requested is revealing of the high quality of investors, while the fact that the public proposal in Greece from private investors raised €450 million is indicative of the high demand, not including the participation of special investors who also participated in the public offering domestically.
The participation of long-term investors covered more than half of the demand and, according to the first data from the allocation of shares, among the big investment houses taking positions in National are Fidelity, BlackRock, Capital, Allianz, Lazard and investment funds Norges (Norway), GIC (Singapore), Robeco (Netherlands), RWC (America) and Wellington (America).
