Capital News
Aareal Bank has brought about a capital increase of about €269 million gross, to create more room for lucrative new business. Acquisitions are not planned. For five old shares, two new ones can be secured. The issue price of the 17,102,062 new shares was €15.75. The share of Depfa Holding in the real-estate bank fell to 26.59 percent. Given the large potential in the markets, the bank has raised its new-business target for the current year to seven to eight billion euros, said Wolf Schumacher on 14 April. That is two billion euros more than proposed at the beginning of the year.
At the AGM on 6 May, Commerzbank shareholders are to decide the proposed reduction of share capital and an extensive reduction of the Special Fund for Financial Market Stabilization (SoFFin) silent partnerships. Shareholder association Deutsche Schutzvereinigung für Wertppierbesitz will support the decisions. First, 2.14 billion euros of the subscribed capital (out of a total of €3.48 billion) are to be placed in the capital reserves. The calculated par value per share would reduce from €2.60 to €1.00, and the share capital to €1.34 billion. After that Commerzbank would swap €1.00 billion of conditional mandatory exchangeable bonds for shares. Investors owning Commerzbank shares by close of business on 6 April could purchase one of these bonds for each share. All bonds offered were successfully placed by 13 April. To prevent dilution, SoFFin will convert a further around €1.4 billion in silent partnerships to shares. The bonds placed are to be exchanged into new shares at the latest by the 19th week. But for that, shareholders would first have to rubber-stamp a conditional capital on 6 May. The necessary new shares would arise from converting silent partnerships of SoFFin, which enjoys no rights, but would in exchange receive the gross proceeds of 4.3 billion euros from the placement of the mandatory exchangeable bonds. At 5.7 billion euros, in the first step the bank achieved more than half of the planned volume. The second capital increase will be calculated so that the silent contributions could be reduced in both steps together by a total of €11 billion. The rights offering will be released in late May. It is envisaged that the Special Fund will continue to be involved in Commerzbank after the implementation of both steps, at 25 percent plus one share.