VTB plans new share issue of up to 49% for Wildberries partnership at price of 87 rubles/share

MOSCOW. May 27 (Interfax) - Russian state bank VTB is planning a new SPO in order to fund its partnership with the Wildberries-Russ (RWB) group.

The bank said on Tuesday that its supervisory board had taken the decision to propose shareholders discuss increasing charter capital through an additional issue of ordinary shares via a public offering at their meeting on June 30. The proposed price is 87 rubles per share.

The bank plans to place up to 6,292,651,866 shares, which is around 49% of its ordinary shares. After the SPO, the government's stake will remain above 50% of the bank's charter capital, VTB said in a statement.

"The total volume of the additional share issue will be determined taking into account the bank's actual needs and the market situation at the time of placement, and will be announced in accordance with the established procedure after the completion of book building," the bank said.

The proceeds will be used "to fund the partnership with the RWB group and develop the bank's core business," VTB said.

"A fairly large additional issue, its limit is over 500 billion [rubles], it won't all necessarily be used. We plan to channel the funds foremost into expanding our business, including into cooperation with the Wildberries platform," VTB head Andrei Kostin said on news outlet Vesti.

VTB carried out an SPO last year at a price of 67 rubles per share. It reduced the state's stake to a controlling interest, but this stake again increased to 74.45% as a result of the conversion of preferred shares.

VTB first deputy CEO Dmitry Pyanov said in April that the bank does not need a new share issue to meet capital adequacy requirements.

Earlier on Tuesday it was announced that VTB and RWB have agreed on a strategic partnership, the first step in which will be for VTB to buy a 5% stake in RWB's subsidiary bank, with the possibility of increasing it in future.