17th Apr 2015 11:29
LONDON (Alliance News) - Serco Group PLC Friday said Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan have found buyers at 142 pence per share for the remaining 5.3% of the shares not taken up in its rights issue.
Earlier Friday, Serco said it had received 94.7% acceptances for its one-for-one rights issue at 101p per share launched last month after the group posted a huge loss on the back of massive provisions taken on onerous contracts. It said that Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan would then seek to find subscribers for the remaining 29.0 million shares of 549.3 million total.
Shares in Serco were trading down 3.2% at 142.06p early Friday afternoon.
The net proceeds from the placing of the shares will be paid "to those persons whose rights have lapsed in accordance with the terms of the Rights Issue, pro rata to their lapsed provisional allotments", it said.
Serco had said in March it would launch the GBP555 million rights issue in order to refinance its existing lending facilities and cut its gross debt pile by GBP450 million. The rights issue emerged after it posted a pretax loss for 2014 of GBP1.35 billion, having booked GBP1.31 billion in impairment charges and writedowns related to problem contracts.
By Karolina Kaminska; karolinakaminska@alliancenews.com @KarolinaAllNews
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