PrefBlog

Xstrata has announced:

its intention to redeem all of its outstanding Cumulative Preferred Shares, Series H (TSX: FAL.PR.H) and Series 2 (FAL.PR.A) by the end of July 2008. Holders of Series H shares will receive C$25.00 per share in cash and holders of Series 2 shares will receive C$25.50 in cash, in each case plus accrued and unpaid dividends in respect of each share up to, but excluding, the date of redemption. Xstrata Canada intends to use its internal cash resources to fund the aggregate redemption price of approximately C$275 million.

FAL.PR.H is currently in the PerpetualPremium index; it was moved there from Scraps in the 2007-10-31 rebalancing following the DBRS credit upgrade.

FAL.PR.A is currently the only member of the RatchetRate index; it was also moved from Scraps immediately following the upgrade.

Interestingly, FAL.PR.B will not be called. It’s a Fixed-Floater, exchangeable to FAL.PR.A every five years; the next exchange date is 2009-3-1, on which date it may be redeemed at 25.00. Presumably it is not long for this world.

Update, 2008-05-29: Dates have been set:

As previously announced, Xstrata Canada has issued notices to redeem all of its outstanding Cumulative Preferred Shares, Series H (TSX:FAL.PR.H) and Series 2 (FAL.PR.A). The Series H shares will be redeemed on June 30, 2008 and the Series 2 shares will be redeemed on July 10, 2008. Holders of Series H shares will receive C$25.00 per share in cash and holders of Series 2 shares will receive C$25.50 in cash, in each case plus accrued and unpaid dividends in respect of each share up to, but excluding, the date of redemption. Xstrata Canada intends to use its internal cash resources to fund the aggregate redemption price of approximately C$275 million.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Issue Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.