The Philippine Stock Exchange plans to raise as much as P3.16 billion through a stock rights offering in February.
The bourse, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, will offer a maximum of 11.5 million common shares to eligible shareholders at a price of up to P275 apiece.
The exchange plans to use the net proceeds from the rights offering to pay corporate debt, and finance product development and capital expenditures,
The PSE tentatively set the offering period on Feb. 5 to 9 and the listing date on Feb 23.
The planned rights offering is expected to reduce the brokers’ ownership in the local bourse to less than 20 percent as required under the Securities Regulation Code.
PSE president Ramon Monzon earlier said the local bourse obtained pre-emptive rights that would exclude brokers as well as existing institutional investors from the rights offering.
The bourse earlier hired BDO Capital and Investments Corp. and First Metro Investments Corp. the underwriters of the offering.
It also invited Shenzhen Stock Exchange to become a minority investor by buying shares in the rights offering.
The reduced brokers’s stake in PSE was required by SEC as a condition to the bourse’s acquisition of the nation’s bond exchange.
The PSE plans to acquire a majority stake in Philippine Dealing System and Holdings Inc., which serves as the holding company of fixed-income trading platform Philippine Dealing and Exchange Corp., Philippine Depositary and Trust Corp. and Philippine Securities Settlement Corp.
The Philippine Competition Commission, country’s antitrust body mandated to review mergers and acquisitions, last month allowed the PSE proceed with the purchase of a controlling interest in PDS Holdings.
The PSE must secure exemption from the SEC to finalize the deal. The so-called exemptive relief will allow the PSE to acquire majority of PDS Holdings, as the current rules prohibit any single industry from owning over 20 percent of any exchange.
Share price of PSE on Friday closed at P240.