PrefBlog

Bell Aliant has announced:

Bell Aliant Preferred Equity Inc. (the “Company”) has closed the sale of 10,000,000 4.85% Cumulative 5-Year Rate Reset Series A Preferred Shares (the “Series A Preferred Shares”) at a price of $25.00 per Series A Preferred Share. This follows the Company’s previously announced bought deal public offering led by BMO Capital Markets and Scotia Capital Inc. The Series A Preferred Shares begin trading on the TSX under the symbol “BAF” today.

BAF.PR.A is a 4.85%+209 FixedReset announced February 22. Closing was delayed from the originally scheduled March 9 due to what appears to be a clerical error. It would appear that there was another hiccup this morning; trading was halted:

The following issues have been halted by Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC):

Issuer Name: Bell Aliant Preferred Equity Inc.
TSX Ticker Symbol: BAF.PR.A
Time of Halt: 8:32
Reason for Halt: Pending Closing

and eventually started 45 minutes into the session:

Trading resumes in:

Issuer Name: Bell Aliant Preferred Equity Inc.
TSX Ticker Symbol: BAF.PR.A
Resumption Time: 10:15 a.m.

The issue traded 202,290 shares today in a range of 24.79-90 before closing at 24.80-84, 54×1.

Vital statistics are:

BAF.PR.A will be tracked by HIMIPref™ but consigned to the Scraps index on credit concerns.

Update, 2011-3-25: The greenshoe was fully exercised:

Bell Aliant Inc. (“Bell Aliant”) (TSX:BA) announced today Bell Aliant Preferred Equity Inc. (the “Company”) has closed the sale of an additional 1,500,000 Cumulative 5-Year Rate Reset Series A Preferred Shares (the “Series A Preferred Shares”) at a price of $25.00 per Series A Preferred Share. This follows the exercise in full by the underwriters of the over-allotment option in connection with the Company’s previously announced bought deal public offering of Series A Preferred Shares (the “Offering”) led by BMO Capital Markets and Scotia Capital Inc. As a result of the exercise of the over-allotment option, the aggregate gross proceeds to the Company pursuant to the Offering now total $287.5 million. The Series A Preferred Shares began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol “BAF.PR.A” on March 15, 2011.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 at 9:20 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.