Hellenic announces 4-for-1 share split

By Hamza Hendawi

HELLENIC Bank yesterday announced a four-for-one share split, saying the move would bolster investors’ interest in the stock.An official announcement by the bank, the island’s third largest, said the split would be voted on by shareholders during an extraordinary meeting in September.Hellenic Bank shares currently have a nominal value of £1 each. This will be reduced to 25 cents after the split.The bank also announced the issue of 600,000 shares and 600,000 warrants for bank employees. Terms of the issue will be announced at a later date, according to the statement.The bank’s shares have had an extraordinary performance in recent weeks and news of the split is likely to broaden interest in the stock. It closed at £7.24 last Friday, realising gains of more than 100 per cent since the start of the year.Last week, the bank said it had made a public bid to acquire the entire share capital of the insurance company Pancyprian, ending months of speculations about the bank’s search for a quick vehicle into the island’s competitive insurance market. It said it had already acquired 60 per cent of Pancyprian’s share capital.A split in the shares of Hellenic Bank follows a similar move by the Popular Bank, whose stocks went into a two-for-one split earlier in the summer. The Bank of Cyprus plans a two-for-one split shortly as part of the restructuring of the group.Shares of the three banks have been at the centre of the market’s bullish rally in the past six months, a period which saw share prices rise by an astounding 173 per cent as of last Friday. The three account for more than 70 per cent of the market’s capitalisation.The market was closed yesterday and on Monday to allow brokerages time to clear their backlog of administrative work, a problem created by the dramatic increase in volume in recent weeks. Trading resumes today, when the impact of Hellenic’s share-split announcement on the share price will be seen.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.