PSE oks China Bank’s P15B stock rights offer

The Philippine Stock Exchange has approved a stock rights offering worth as much as P15 billion planned by Sy family-led China Banking Corp. this April.

China Bank plans to sell as much as 497.97 million in new shares to existing shareholders which will be taken out of the unissued portion of its authorized capital stock, based on an offering circular posted by the PSE on Friday.

The offer shares will be priced on April 6 while the offering will run from April 24 to May 5 this year.
Tentative listing date is on May 10.

The entitlement ratio will be announced in the future.

The offer price will be computed based on the volume-weighted average of the bank’s common shares on the PSE for each of the 15 consecutive trading days immediately prior to (and including) the pricing date, subject to a discount to be determined on such pricing date.

China Bank Capital Corp. is the lead underwriter for this exercise. The joint global coordinators and bookrunners are Citigroup and JP Morgan Securities.

Proceeds from the offering will fund China Bank’s expansion program while improving its stock trading liquidity.