BankThai to sell a quarter stake
TPG Newbridge has struck an agreement with BankThai to purchase a 24.99-per-cent stake in the bank, according to a filing with the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) yesterday.
The subscription is expected to take place in February or March. However, the small bank did not mention how much capital would be raised from the share sale. Earlier, the bank estimated that around Bt7 billion would be generated from the share allocation. On November 22 last year, BankThai said that it signed an exclusive Memorandum of Understanding with TPG Newbridge to offer it a 31-per-cent stake. TPG Newbridge, operated by Texas Pacific Group, manages about US$5.3 billion (Bt188 billion) of Asian assets and controls China's Shenzen Development Bank. An unnamed bank official was quoted by Dow Jones Newswires as saying that pricing has yet to be determined but the bank's shareholders have agreed that the new shares can be sold at a price below Bt10 a share par value, but not below 90 per cent of the market price of the shares over the 14 trading days prior to the pricing. Stock of BankThai yesterday fell 5.10 per cent per cent to close the day at Bt4.84. Meanwhile, BankThai said that the Financial Institutions Development Fund (FIDF) would not compensate it for losses of Bt2.04 billion related to the management of CAP assets. The FIDF is now BankThai's major shareholder with a 48.98-per-cent stake. Under the bank's recapitalisation plan, the bank will raise its registered capital by issuing 940 million new shares, 500 million of which will be offered to TPG Newbridge. The rest will be offered to its existing shareholders or Thai investors early next year. In the third quarter of last year, the bank recorded a net profit of Bt383.90 million, up from Bt318.73 million in the corresponding period a year earlier. However, it posted a net loss of Bt703.24 million for the first nine months of 2006, compared with Bt641.85 million net profit in the same period a year before. The Nation
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