Kuwait’s Burgan Bank Plans KD21.6m Rights Issue

Burgan Bank, Kuwait’s third-largest lender by assets, will launch a KD21.6 million ($74.8 million) rights issue by the end of 2014 pending regulatory approvals, it said in a bourse filing on Sunday.

Burgan said it plans to issue 216 million new shares and that the rights issue will raise its paid-up capital to KD197.18 million.

This would indicate that shares would be priced at KD0.1 in the rights issue, a significant discount to the KD0.54 the stock closed at on Thursday.

The shares will be available to existing shareholders on a proportional basis and any unsold shares will then be put on general sale, the bank said in the statement.

Kuwait Projects Company (KIPCO), which owns a 57.94 per cent stake in Burgan, had said in September that it received approval from the country’s central bank to increase its stake in the lender by five per cent.