By Andrei Skvarsky.
Bank of Georgia is seeking a premium London Stock Exchange listing, which would open the former Soviet republic’s number one lender to a much broader range of investors.
The firm plans to reincorporate as a UK holding company, to be called Newco. It will then come up with a proposal in the fourth quarter of 2011 that holders of Bank of Georgia global depositary receipts, which have been traded on the LSE since 2006, swap them for Newco ordinary shares, the bank said in a statement.
According to the Financial Times, Bank of Georgia was one of the best-performing stock among shares of banks from the former Soviet republics last year and is best-placed to take advantage of the expansion ofGeorgia’s undeveloped banking market.
In the past seven years, Bank of Georgia’s market value has swelled to $454m from $20m and its assets have grown tenfold to $2.5m.
Its shares have plummeted by one-third from their February peak because of recent market sell-offs and flight from risk, but the lender is picking up.
The bank controls 36% of Georgia’s loans market and 34% of the country’s deposits market.
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