MANILA, Philippines?Investors snapped up a P10-billion stock rights offering by Ayala-led Bank of the Philippine Islands, a core capital-building exercise meant to boost the bank's expansion plans for the new decade.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, BPI said its recent stock rights offering was fully subscribed, with 436.17 million right shares submitted for application worth about P14.18 billion. This application level exceeded the bank's issuance size of 307.69 million new common shares at P32.50 per share.

In the disclosure, BPI said 98.6 percent of the issuance was allocated to the entitlement shares of subscribing shareholders while the balance of 1.4 percent was earmarked for applications who applied for additional shares based on their relative shareholdings in the bank as of record date.

Under the offering, existing shareholders were allowed to buy one new BPI share for every 10.55 common shares held as of Aug. 5.

The resulting increase in core or tier 1 capital is in turn intended to boost BPI's lending portfolio, expand customer relationships while developing new business segments as well as evaluate and pursue inorganic growth or prospective acquisitions.

After this stock rights offering, BPI's capital adequacy ratio to risk assets will hit 16.4 percent versus the minimum regulatory requirement of 10 percent.