Michael Mansoor FIRSTCARIBBEAN INTERNATIONAL Bank has announced the results of its recently closed rights offer, and that as a result of the rights issue, the public ownership in the Bank has increased from 10 per cent to 12.5 per cent.
"The Board is extremely pleased with the public interest from across the region in FirstCaribbean International Bank as demonstrated by the results of the rights offer," stated Michael Mansoor, Executive Chairman of FirstCaribbean.
"The very positive results from the rights offer demonstrate that FirstCaribbean's minority shareholders solidly support the Bank and its goal of becoming the pre-eminent financial institution in the Caribbean market."
The Bank's minority shareholders, with the exception of the largest single minority shareholder, purchased 194 per cent of their initial entitlement under the rights issue, which included a significant block of the shares entitled to the largest minority shareholder. As a result, a total of 43,066,296 common shares or 73 per cent of the maximum offering of 58,674,509 common shares were taken up.
"The successful subscription of the rights offering is a major step for FirstCaribbean to achieve its stated goal of 20 per cent public ownership in the next few years," explained Charles Pink, Chief Executive Officer of FirstCaribbean.
"Increased ownership by the Caribbean public in this, the largest publicly traded company by market capitalisation, is important both for FirstCaribbean International Bank as well as for capital markets in the region as a whole."
In addition to over 3,000 personal and institutional shareholders from across the region, all of FirstCaribbean's employees are shareholders through the Employee Share Gift, and the Bank will be encouraging increased employee share ownership over time. FirstCaribbean shares are traded on the stock exchanges of Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.
Barclays Bank PLC and CIBC remain equal majority shareholders of FirstCaribbean at 43.75 per cent each.
First Caribbean is a result of the combination of Barclays Bank PLC's Caribbean operations and CIBC West Indies Holdings Limited. FirstCaribbean is one of the largest locally listed banks in the Caribbean based on market capitalisation with some US$9 billion in assets, and over 700,000 accounts.
FirstCaribbean operates in fifteen countries and 25 islands. More information about First-Caribbean can be found at www.firstcaribbeanbank.com.
