The shareholders of Banca Popolare di Bari, caught in the storm following the opening of the investigation involving the bank’s top management, continue to grapple with the impossibility of selling their shares.
Shares that the Apulian bank had decided to list on the Hi-Mtf market in order to guarantee its shareholders – ironically – the possibility of selling their shares, making the stock liquid. We are talking about a bank with 70,000 member-shareholders, with roughly 160.2 million shares in circulation for a theoretical capitalisation, at a price of EUR 6.60, of EUR 1.057 billion.
The person who has turned the spotlight on the problem is Carmelo Catalano, who in an analysis in Finanza Report points out:
“The problem of being unable to sell the shares exploded dramatically following the first write-down, which took place in April 2016, whereby the value of the share was brought down from EUR 9.53 to EUR 7.50. Values considerably higher than the presumable economic value of the share.
If the intention was to ensure liquidity for the stock so as to allow shareholders to liquidate their investment within a reasonable time, then it was clear that the objective could not be achieved by listing the share on the Hi-Mtf market. If, instead, the objective was to kick the can down the road, trying to put off the problem, then the objective was fully achieved, or nearly so.
What is certain is that selling shares of Banca Popolare di Bari has become an impossible task.
At the last auction, held on 15/9/2017, for lack of money (market rules do not allow deviations of more than 12% from the reference price, set at EUR 7.50), that is, of potential buyers, barely 300 shares were traded for a countervalue of EUR 1,980.00. Since the listing on the market, which took place on 30 June 2017, the stock has to date recorded trading of barely EUR 158,000”.
That the bank’s shares cannot be sold – Catalano explains further – is normal. It would be strange if it were otherwise. Why?
It was a security, exactly like the shares of the Veneto banks, not listed on a regulated market, whose value was set year by year by the shareholders’ meeting and placed at a value much higher, in terms of multiples, than that of listed banks. The ideal mixture for the press, in reporting the news, to have had an easy time describing the bank’s shareholders as complete naïfs, unaware of the risk of equity investment, which is moreover illiquid.
Will this be the fate of the other Apulian popular banks?
http://www.wallstreetitalia.com/pop-bari-azionisti-in-trappola-non-riescono-a-vendere/
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