Agricultural Development Bank (adb) has postponed the launch of its Initial Public Offer (IPO) on the Ghana Stock Exchange which was slated for this morning June 23rd,2015.
[contextly_sidebar id=”gKBNYeBUGBhksHyBbtixumnOasK7RRuO”]Early this year the bank was forced to put the launch on hold after government who is majority shareholder of the bank called for a temporary suspension following agitations from workers of the bank.
The Director General for the Securituies and Exchange Comission (SEC) Dr Adu Annane Antwi who confirmed the cancelatioon of the launch to Citi Business News said a new date has not been communicated to the commission yet.
Adb put on hold today’s launch over a number of legal and polital challenges admist agitations from some of its workers.
With the legal challenges for example the member of parliament for the New Juaben South constituency, Dr. Mark Assibey-Yeboah had filed a suit at the Supreme Court insisting the Bank’s initial Public Offer should first be approved by parliament.
The MP invoked the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to compel the Bank to seek parliamentary approval before it proceeds with the planned public offer.
If the offer launch had come on today it will have ended on 21st August,2015 and within four months specifically on the 16th of September this year ‘ ADB’ would begun trading on the Ghana Stock Exchange.
The bank was hoping to raise a total of 398,454,178 cedis through the IPO.
A total of 74,888,369 shares belonging to the Bank of Ghana are to be sold while another set of 75,471,698 new shares from the bank proper will also be sold at a new share price of 2 cedis 65 pesweas.
According to the bank of this amount it will dish out 191, 741 million cedis to the Bank of Ghana for its shares.
60 million of the cash raised will be used by the bank for expansion and refurbishment of its branch network.
About 49 million cedis for rebranding and staff rationalization.
The rest of the cash raised will be used for business applications-34 million, IT upgrades and other IT solutions-26 million cedis.
The rest will go into the bank’s new head office-8 million cedis, ATM expansion-16 million cedis and offer expenses – 13,480 milion cedis.
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By: Vivian Kai Lokko/citifmonline.com/Ghana