Banco de Oro to list at PSE today

Banco de Oro, one of the biggest universal banks in the country, will list its shares today at the Philippines Stock Exchange following a successful initial public offering (IPO) which saw the over-allotment of additional stocks.

BDO, controlled by the family of retail king Henry Sy of the SM Group, is the second banking entity to list at the stockmarket this year after thrift bank CityState Savings Bank and only the fourth issue drawn to the PSE. Incidentally, property developer Highlands Prime Inc. listed last month is also majority owned by the SM Group.

The biggest IPO since Canadian insurer Sun Life’s listing in early 2000, BDO expects to raise almost P2 billion in net proceeds, although the bigger portion of about P1.17 billion will accrue to the existing shareholders in the secondary sale.

Priced at P20.80 per share, the P864-million net proceeds from the primary offer will be initially used by the bank to increase trading accounts securities and subsequently to support its lending and expansion activities.

BDO will list a total of over 908 million common shares out of which 857 million represent the issued and outstanding shares, inclusive of the 56.35 million secondary shares owned by BDO Capital and Investment Corp.

For the primary offer, BDO issued for sale 32.687 million common shares during the IPO but allotted an additional 17.81 million shares under the greenshoe option which, according to BDO’s lead underwriter BPI Capital, was fully exercised.

BDO also allotted 4.452 million shares from both the primary and secondary offers for the Employee Stock Allocation Plan (ESAP) to the bank employees but BPI Capital said only a little over half, or 2.57 million shares, were taken up, hence making available the remaining 1.88 million shares to the general public.

With a total nationwide network of 120 branches, including those of the merged Dao Heng Bank, BDO is a full-service universal bank considered as a niche player in the industry, focusing on the consumer and middle market segments anchored on its link with the SM group.

Aside from SM, other major shareholders of BDO include the Cambridge Pacific Fund, an investment fund administered by UBS, and Dao Heng Bank Ltd., a subsidiary of the DBS Group of Singapore, which owns a significant share in another bank, the Ayala’s Bank of the Philippine Islands.