The Board of Directors of Citycon Oyj has decided to start preparations for a share offering. Citycon shares will be offered to a limited number, being less than one hundred, of selected Finnish and international institutional investors. The maximum number of new shares to be offered for subscription is 10,000,000 (ten million).
Citycon is the market leader for shopping centre business in Finland and is focused on realizing profitable growth by expanding its property portfolio through acquisitions and property development, by streamlining its operations and by assessing opportunities to expand its geographical scope. The Company´s ability to acquire, develop and upgrade retail business premises and service solutions opens up new opportunities for growth. At present Citycon focuses on Finland. A process of assessing business opportunities in the Scandinavian and Baltic countries was initiated in May 2004. In order to facilitate future growth, the Board has decided to prepare a share offering for institutional investors. The deviation from the pre-emption right relates to the Company´s wish to expand its shareholder base in order to support growth of the Company and to improve liquidity of the shares. The Board has decided that facilitating future growth and expansion of the shareholder base are sufficiently weighty financial reasons to deviate from the shareholders´ pre-emption rights. The Board has made this decision under the authorization of the Annual General Meeting of Citycon of 15 March 2004. The Board will propose to invalidate the 3,874,000 treasury shares that Citycon currently holds in the next Annual General Meeting in spring 2005.
Implementation of the share offering
The share offering will be implemented through a bookbuilding process which collects the bids for new shares made by a selected group of institutional investors. Receipt of bids will commence on 13 September 2004 at 9.00 a.m. (Finnish time) and will end no later than 14 September 2004 at 4.00 p.m. (Finnish time) unless the period for receipt of bids is extended. The Company has the right to close the bookbuilding process in consultation with the lead manager, before 14 September 2004 at 4.00 p.m. (Finnish time), however, but not earlier than 13 September 2004 at 4.00 p.m. (Finnish time). An early closing of the bookbuilding process will be notified immediately by a stock exchange release.
Trading with the new shares is estimated to commence on the main list of the Helsinki Exchanges on 27 September 2004 subject to the receipt of all regulatory approvals.
The new shares will correspond to approximately 9.45 percent of the Company´s share capital and voting rights prior to the share offering and approximately 8.64 percent after the offering, provided that the offering is fully subscribed.
The lead manager of the share offering will be Kempen & Co N.V., a Dutch investment bank, based in Amsterdam.
Source: Citycon
