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Building Society Holdings sees shares listing at 88 cents
Building Society Holdings sees shares listing at 88 cents on Feb. 1
By Paul McBeth
Jan. 27 (BusinessDesk) – Building Society Holdings Ltd., the merged entity made up of Marac Finance and Southern Cross and Canterbury building societies, expects its shares to list at 88 cents it joins the NZX next week.
The financial services company will list its 300 million shares on Feb. 1 with a net tangible asset backing of some $265 million, based on pro-forma accounts. Pyne Gould Corp., the parent of Marac, will distribute most of its 72% stake in the holding company among shareholders in the first half of the year.
The listing will be the first of the year, and comes after Prime Minister John Key yesterday flagged his support for the partial floats of State-owned electricity generators Mighty River Power Ltd., Genesis Energy Ltd., Meridian Energy Ltd., coal miner Solid Energy Ltd., and a sell-down of its stake in carrier Air New Zealand Ltd.
BHSL’s ultimate goal is to achieve a banking licence, and took a few more steps down that path when it achieved the minimum required investment grade credit rating of BBB-. The firm, which has $2.2 billion worth of assets, was also included in the government’s extended retail deposit guarantee, which expires at the end of the year.
PGC shares were unchanged at 36 cents in trading today, and the company has a market capitalisation of some $289.4 million. It hasn’t decided on its future, which may see its remaining assets liquidated once the merger’s completed.
The company has been mulling how to carve out its Torchlight Fund assets, the investment vehicle of major shareholder George Kerr, which will make up the bulk of what’s left over, along with Perpetual Group’s wealth management arm. Kerr was left out of the mix of the merged entity, missing out on a board spot, but as a major shareholder in PGC, he’ll have some skin in BHSL.
Kerr acquired a cornerstone stake in PGC in 2009 when the company took a hit on the collapse in the property market, and set up a unit to take $90 million worth of dud Marac loans and put them into a new distressed asset vehicle called Real Estate Credit Fund Ltd.
(BusinessDesk)
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