VTB now taking People's IPO share buyer offers
MOSCOW. March 12 (Interfax) - VTB is starting to accept offers in its buyback of shares from investors that took part in the bank's 2007 People's IPO.
The VTB 24 offices will be collecting the offers from today until April 13, inclusive, VTB materials indicate. All settlements with share owners who took part in the IPO are planned to be wrapped up before April 30, and with successors before - June 29.
The buy-back price is 13.6 kopecks per share, and VTB Pension Administrator will be buying stock for no more than 500,000 rubles (maximum 3,671,471 shares).
Shareholders with less than 500,000 rubles in VTB stakes will have to sell their stakes in full - they will not be able to keep even one share for participation in meetings, President and CEO of VTB 24 Mikhail Zadornov said.
Zadornov said that the buy-back can involve stock held by private individuals and legal entities, Russian residents and non-residents. Stockholders can sell shares they held on two dates: May 25, 2007 (the date of the VTB IPO) and February 1, 2012.
"Even if a person sold shares in the interim between these two dates, and then bought them and held them as of February 1, 2012, he has the right to present the shares for buy-back," he said. The minimum stake held on those two dates will be purchased, he said.
Furthermore, shares for buyback may also be offered by successors that exercise their rights before the offer expires (April 13).
Of the 114,000 private stockholders, 95,000 have more than 1,000 rubles worth of shares and the rest less. If all 114,000 make their shares available for purchase, the bank could spend as much as 16 billion rubles. "I can say confidently that the payout amount will be less then those estimates made in prior months," Zadornov said. Shareholders with less than 1,000 rubles worth of stock will likely not offer their shares for sale, he said. The overall value of the stock held by the 95,000 people with more than 1,000 rubles worth runs to about 13 billion rubles, he said.
The buyback from People's IPO participants could run to 0.7%-0.8% of the bank's charter capital, VTB chief Andrei Kostin said not recently.
If minority holders cut no deals with their shares in the period from April 24, 2007 to April 13 of this year, there will be no tax on sales in the buyback, VTB 24 materials say.
The shares will be bought with the VTB group's own monies, the parent bank said. VTB Pension Administrator plans to sell the share obtained during the buyback on the market sometime down the road.