RIYADH, 31 March 2007 — The initial public offering of the Arabian Shield Cooperative Insurance Company (ASCIC) was oversubscribed by more than 4.5 times, the company and the receiving bank, Saudi Hollandi Bank (SHB) announced here yesterday.
A total of 8,000,000 shares that were offered at a par value of SR10 per share for period of 10 days, ended on March 26. Upon closing of the offering period, the three receiving banks Saudi Hollandi Bank, National Commercial Bank (NCB) and Samba Financial Group received 153,029 applications subscribing to 36,097,750 shares resulting into a total subscription of SR360,977,500. The receiving banks are in the process of clearing the backlog and refund of the oversubscribed money will begin from tomorrow.
ASCIC Chairman Prince Mohammed Ibn Saud Al-Kabeer expressed his complete satisfaction on the IPO process and addressed his thanks and gratitude to the three banks and to the subscribers who reposed confidence in his company by contributing unprecedented number of shares to the new venture. “ Following finalization of all procedures, we will start operations and will do our best to achieve our target plans,” he added
According to Tom Lind, head of the Investment Banking of SHB, the IPO market in the Kingdom is still very attractive and strong for public issue.” Such offerings provide good opportunity for the subscribers to make capital gains upon listing and we expect subscribers to benefit from such offerings,” he noted.
