Security Bank Corp. has firmed up its offer of 602.83 million in voting preferred shares to existing shareholders as it hopes to accept more foreign investors instead of raising fresh funds. FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines–Security Bank Corp. (SBC) has firmed up its offer of 602.83 million in voting preferred shares to existing shareholders as it hopes to accept more foreign investors instead of raising fresh funds.
In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Friday, Security Bank said it had obtained the approval of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and Securities and Exchange Commission to issue as much as one billion voting preferred shares alongside a P100-million increase in authorized capital to P10.1 billion.
Each shareholder may subscribe to one new voting preferred share for every existing common share held at an offer price of P0.10. The bank may not offer the entire one billion shares at this time, settling at 602.83 million voting preferred shares.
The offer period will start on June 23 and run until July 4. Stockholders as of record date June 16 are entitled to subscribe.
“Net proceeds shall be allocated to information technology expenditures, specifically for investment in a new data center and to the disaster recovery and business continuity management project,” the bank said.
The plan to create new voting preferred shares will enable the bank to deal with foreign equity limits.
Security Bank is close to hitting the foreign equity limit of 40 percent. Because the bank has real estate assets, foreigners are allowed to own only up to 40 percent of outstanding shares to comply with the ceiling for selected industries as prescribed in the Philippine Constitution.
The bank’s voting preferred shares will be non-cumulative, non-participating and non-convertible into common shares. The dividend will be equivalent to 10-year PDST-R2 and repriced every 10 years. They shares will not be listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange or registered under the Securities Regulation Code.