Bangladesh bank plans record IPO

Thursday, December 17, 2009
DHAKA: Bangladesh’s second-largest bank plans to raise $145 million in what will be the country’s biggest ever public sale of shares, regulators said on Wednesday.

The state-owned Janata Bank Ltd has sought approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell 10 million shares at 1,000 taka (145 dollars) apiece, the commission’s head told AFP.

“Janata will raise 10 billion taka (145 million dollars) through an initial public offering (IPO). The face value of each share is 100 taka with a 900 taka premium,” said SEC executive director A T M Tariquzzaman.

“It will be the country’s largest IPO, subject to SEC permission,” he said, adding that the approval process could take weeks or possibly months.

Janata has 850 branches across Bangladesh and four in the United Arab Emirates to serve the UAE’s hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi migrant workers. It employs about 13,000 people.

The fully state-owned and controlled company had net assets of 3.88 billion dollars in December 2008 and paid-up capital of 55 million dollars. It was not immediately known how much the government’s stake would fall to after the IPO.