PrefBlog

Greatwest Lifeco has announced:

the closing of its previously announced offering of Non-Cumulative 5-Year Rate Reset First Preferred Shares, Series J (the “Series J Shares”) priced at $25.00 per share. Following the successful sale of the initially announced offering of 8,000,000 Series J Shares, the underwriters of the offering exercised their over-allotment option to purchase an additional 1,200,000 Series J Shares, resulting in the Company issuing today 9,200,000 Series J Shares to raise gross proceeds of $230 million. The net proceeds will be used by the Company for general corporate purposes and to augment Lifeco’s current liquidity position.

The offering was made through a syndicate of underwriters led by BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. and Scotia Capital Inc. The shares will be posted for trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol “GWO.PR.J”.

The greenshoe noted in the initial announcement was therefore fully subscribed.

Sadly for the buyers, however, the issue is trading more as a perpetual than a retractible. closing at 24.25-35 on volume of 358,750 shares. The yield until the limitMaturity is 5.97%, while the yield to the first call is 6.73%.

The issue has been added to the FixedReset Index.

I have uploaded an evaluation of the FixedReset subIndex

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 7:45 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.