They offer 25 euros per “paper”, which is the amount they paid to the state, and small shareholders can deposit them until April 9.
Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB) also officially announced an offer to take over the remaining ordinary shares of Komercijalna banka and the entire issue of preferred shares. The information was also published by the Central Registry of Securities and the Belgrade Stock Exchange. The offer is valid from yesterday, March 11, lasts exactly 30 days and ends on April 9 this year.
It has been known since mid-February that the new owner of Komercijalna banka intends to propose a takeover bid and shares from small shareholders to these owners of securities, when the Slovenian bank announced that it intends to send a takeover bid for the remaining shares. As stated now, when the takeover bid was officially announced, NLB intends to buy 16.77 percent of the shares, which is 2.82 million ordinary shares of the bank. They offers 25 euros per share for them, which is identical to the amount at which they bought a package of shares from the state.
These are shares of small shareholders traded on the stock exchange and which were not the subject of a recent transaction by which the Slovenian bank bought 83.23 percent of the state share in this largest domestic bank. NLB, which is predominantly owned by investment funds, paid 387 million euros to the state package before the end of last year.
NLB is offering the owners of priority shares to buy them for 8 euros, which is the average weighted share price in the last six months. The Slovenian bank intends to acquire 100 percent of this issue, considering that all shares are in the hands of minority shareholders.
How many small shareholders will decide to sell this property to the new owner of Komercijalna Banka will be known after April 9, when the offer will be closed. Also, the number of shares deposited with the brokerage house that runs this business will show what small shareholders think about the offered price and whether, perhaps, some of them hope for a better one in the future, although it is difficult to expect when there is a dominant owner with a large share and on the other hand there is a small percentage of shares traded on the capital market.
According to the data from the stock exchange, historically, the highest price for the shares of the once largest domestic state bank was 130 euros and was reached on April 18, 2007. The lowest was only 7.3 euros on the trading day on September 28, 2012. From this it is clear that only those shareholders who bought the papers at a much lower price than they are now offered can hope for some earnings in this business. Among the small shareholders, there are also employees in the bank to whom the shares were distributed free of charge, so it can be said that they are at a profit.
After April 9, it will be known whether NLB will be able to activate the option of forced purchase of shares from small shareholders. Because, when a company that is listed on the stock exchange reaches 90 percent of ownership, according to the Companies Act, it has the right to forcibly buy the remaining ten percent of shares. So, despite the possible disagreement of the owners. This means that in this case, NLB is enough for 6.77 percent of shareholders to sell its shares, and they reach a 90 percent share when they can forcibly buy shares and acquire 100% ownership over Komercijalna banka.
In other words, the freedom of disposal of shareholders is not unlimited. According to the data of the Central Securities Depository, Komercijalna banka has slightly more than a thousand shareholders, both natural and legal persons, Politika reports.
