AXA Completes $5.2 Billion Capital Increase for Winterthur Purchase

France’s AXA Group announced the successful completion of the share capital increase with preferential subscription rights launched on June 14 to finance part of the acquisition of Winterthur (See IJ Website June 14).

“The gross proceeds amount to €4.1 billion [$5.2 billion], with the issue of 208,265,897 new shares,” said the bulletin. “Total demand for this capital increase amounted to approximately €7.5 billion [$9.56 billion], i.e. a subscription rate of 181.55 percent. 205,394,083 new shares were subscribed by irrevocable entitlement (“à titre irréductible”), i.e. 98.62 percent of the total number of new shares, while 172,721,063 new shares were requested to be subscribed by entitlement subject to reduction (“à titre réductible”), and will, as a result, only be satisfied in part, i.e. for 2,871,814 new shares.”

AXA said the “settlement and listing of the new shares on the Eurolist market of Euronext Paris will take place on July 13, 2006, resulting in a total AXA’s share capital of 2,082,658,975 shares as from that date. The new shares will be quoted on the Eurolist market of Euronext Paris on the same line as AXA’s existing shares, under the ISIN code FR0000120628, and will be eligible for any future dividend distributions, including the dividend paid in 2007 in respect of fiscal year 2006 earnings.”

AXA also indicated that since the June 14 announcement it has “successfully secured approximately 70 percent of the total financing of the acquisition of Winterthur through this capital increase and the issue of €2.2 billion [$2.8 billion] of perpetual deeply subordinated notes. The remaining €2.6 billion [$3.3 billion] will be financed through a mix of internal resources, senior and subordinated debt.”

Topics AXA XL