Citadele pulls out of stock market listing

Take note – story published 9 years and 1 month ago

Citadele Bank has canned its planned initial public offering (IPO), the bank announced Wednesday - a day after it had originally hoped to start trading its shares. 

The decision was taken "due to the volatile situation in equity markets" making it "unsuitable" to proceed with the dual listing in London and Riga, the statement said.

Though insisting the IPO was an postponement rather than an outright cancellation, no alternative timeframe for a listing was given.

Head of the bank Guntis Beļavskis wrote in a statement to the media: "Although we've had to reschedule the IPO to another time because of the situation in the market, investors have a true interest in Citadele... Our business is stable, profitable and we are sure that the decision taken now is the right one."

The decision means the wait is still not over for Latvia's first IPO in more than a decade.

Citadele Bank, established as a result of reorganization of the bailed-out Parex Bank, became operational on August 1, 2010.

In late 2008 the Latvian government took over Parex Bank, which was the second largest bank in Latvia at the time, in order to save the privately-owned bank from financial troubles due to the global financial crisis.

On March 23, 2010, the Latvian government adopted a decision about the restructuring Parex Bank by separating part of the assets to create a new bank –  Citadele Bank. When the European Commission approved the Parex Bank bail-out, the Latvian government undertook to sell Citadele Bank by the end of 2014, and the sell-off agreement was signed in November 2014. 

The sell-off of the state-held 75 percent stake in Citadele Bank was completed on April 20, 2015, with Citadele Holdings LLC, a subsidiary of Ripplewood Advisors LLC, and a group of 12 international investors, becoming owners of the bank for €73m.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) retained its 25 percent stake in the bank.

Citadele Bank in late June was the seventh largest bank in Latvia by assets.

Seen a mistake?

Select text and press Ctrl+Enter to send a suggested correction to the editor

Select text and press Report a mistake to send a suggested correction to the editor

Related articles

More

Most important