BoC shareholders green-light LSE move

Bank of Cyprus shareholders on Tuesday approved the lender’s listing on the London Stock Exchange.

The move was approved by 99 per cent of the shareholders present at the BoC’s extraordinary general meeting, which had two resolutions on the agenda — the transfer of the shares to the Ireland-based Bank of Cyprus Holdings Plc and issuing new holding company shares to current shareholders.

Earlier, the bank’s chairman Josef Ackermann said listing the lender’s share on LSE would be to the shareholders’ benefit, no matter whether they lived in Cyprus or abroad, the Cyprus News Agency reported.

The listing is expected to increase share liquidity and make it visible to a wider basis of institutional and other informed investors, Ackermann told shareholders.

The Swiss banker said the BoC listing on the London and Nicosia exchanges, would attract investors to the Cypriot economy as well as to opportunities at the Cyprus Stock Exchange.
Further benefits would result from a future premium listing which would include the share of Cyprus’s largest bank in the FTSE index, Ackermann said.

The bank’s CEO John Hourican said the London listing would provide the bank with easier access to global markets in addition to increasing the tradability of the bank’s share, according to CNA.

On Tuesday noon, the bank’s share was traded at €0.125, almost half the price at which it was relisted on the Cyprus Stock Exchange two years ago.

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.