PrefBlog

Canadian Western Bank has announced:

that it has closed the previously announced private and public offerings of 8.0 million Preferred Units for gross proceeds of $200 million. The private placement consisted of 5.4 million Preferred Units for gross proceeds of $135 million to three institutional purchasers, The bought deal public offering consisted of 2.6 million Preferred Units (“Public Offering Preferred Units”) for gross proceeds of $65 million. Genuity Capital Markets acted as agent and lead underwriter, respectively, on the transactions. Preferred Units consist of one Non-Cumulative 5-Year Rate Reset Preferred Share, Series 3 (the “Series 3 Preferred Shares”) in the capital of the Bank and a certain number of common share purchase warrants (each whole warrant a “Warrant”). Each whole Warrant is exercisable at a price of $14.00 to purchase one common share in the capital of the Bank for five years.

The Bank has granted the underwriters an option to purchase, on the same terms, up to an additional 390,000 Public Offering Preferred Units. This option is exercisable in whole or in part by the underwriters at any time within the next 30 days. The maximum gross proceeds raised under the public offering would be $74.75 million should this option be exercised in full.

It was not a particularly successful issue, trading 99,125 shares in a range of 21.95-24.00 (!!) before closing at 21.80-95.

As noted in the report of the new issue announcement, this issue will not be tracked by HIMIPref™.

Update, 2009-3-12: Canadian Western Bank has announced:

it had closed the issuance of an additional 390,000 Preferred Units as a result of the underwriters exercising their full over-allotment option under the recently announced Preferred Unit public offering. Each Preferred Unit consists of one non-cumulative 5-year rate reset preferred share, series 3 and 1.78 common share purchase warrants. Each whole warrant entitles the holder to purchase one common share of the Bank for a 5 year period at a price of $14.00 per share. The Preferred Units were sold at $25 per unit on the same terms as the public offering.
The gross proceeds from the exercise of the over-allotment were $9,750,000. Total gross proceeds from the private offering of Preferred Units, the public offering of Preferred Units and the exercise of the over-allotment option were $209,750,000.

CWB.PR.A closed today at 21.60-70, 10×26. Somebody really wants those warrants!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 7:41 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.