Piraeus Bank stake sale fetches €1.35 bln
The state’s revenues from its divestment from Piraeus Bank come to 1.35 billion euros. The public offer for 27% of the bank attracted bids of €10.7 billion in the upper range of the offer price, which was set at €4 per share.
The investment interest covered supply over eight times, in a sale that National Economy and Finance Minister Kostis Hatzidakis described as an “unprecedented success.”
According to him, this success is reflected in the fact that the share price was set above last Friday’s closing price on the bourse, before the start of the process. This is “extremely rare worldwide,” he stated, as “in such cases of mass distribution of shares, prices are almost always set at a discount in favor of the buyers.”
For his part, Bank of Greece Governor Yiannis Stournaras also spoke of resounding success, noting that “it mainly reflects the course of the Greek economy, the banking sector, but also of Piraeus Bank itself.”
It should be noted that the international book was covered on Monday, in just six minutes.
The disinvestment of bank bailout fund HFSF from Piraeus is the third European privatization of more than €1 billion carried out through a public offer since 2017 and the largest in Greece. The first major privatization was the sale of shares by the Irish government, which conceded its 29% stake in AIB for €3.4 billion, at a 43% discount to the sale price, while until recently the second largest European privatization was the disposal of the 22% stake held by the HFSF in National Bank for approximately €1.1 billion, which was achieved by minimizing the discount to 2.57%.
HFSF Board Chairman Andreas Verykios expressed satisfaction, noting that “the excellent response of the international and Greek investment public is practical confirmation of the momentum the Greek economy has developed and underlines the confidence in the growth prospects of Greek banks.” HFSF Managing Director Ilias Xirouhakis, for his part, stressed that “the fourth in a row and in less than six months successful divestment constitutes a complete confirmation of the fund’s strategy and choices.”
