Century Commercial Bank starts distributing IPO allotment slips, refund

ShareSansar, March 9:

Five days after allotting the Initial Public Offering (IPO) worth Rs 92 crore, Century Commercial Bank Limited has started distributing allotment slips and refund the non-allottees from today.

The IPO was allotted on March 4 at the head office of the commercial bank in Kathmandu at 7.90 percent to retail investors who had applied up to Rs 50,000 and 3.09 percent to big investors.

However, those who had applied for up to Rs 12,000 had fallen under lottery.

The allotment advice and the refund can be collected from the respective centers where the applicants had filed their IPO application firms.

The IPO, which was issued from January 9 to January 13, was oversubscribed by 24.48 times.

Century’s IPO was one of the most expected events in the stock market not just because of its sheer volume but also because it is the last IPO to be issued by any commercial bank of the country.

Nepal Rastra Bank has stopped issuing license to the commercial bank, and, on the contrary, has been directing the commercial banks and other BFIs to seek merger.

The offering was also special in that it was the largest IPO to be issued by any private bank in the country, second only to primary shares worth Rs 96 crore floated by Agriculture Development Bank Limited.

ICRA Nepal had assigned an ‘[ICRANP] IPO Grade 4+’ to Century Bank’s IPO, which is not at all bad by any standards.

Following the IPO, the commercial bank’s paid-up capital of Rs 1.08 billion has now risen to Rs two billion, as per the regulatory requirement.

It may be noted that there was a huge response to the IPOs issued by three commercial banks — Civil Bank, Commerz and Trust Bank Nepal and Mega Bank—had issued their IPO over the last one year.

Civil Bank’s IPO was oversubscribed by seven times, Commerz and Trust’s IPO was oversubscribed by 11 times and Mega Bank’s IPO was oversubscribed by 22 times.