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Zur Rose, the Swiss online pharmacy, has completed its Sfr200m ($200.8m) at-market rights issue to fund the acquisition of a German e-commerce platform, following the sale of a rump placement on Wednesday evening.
Morgan Stanley and UBS were global coordinators on the fully underwritten deal.
The company issued 2.15m new shares. Of these, 889,239 shares were subscribed for by existing shareholders and 1.26m were sold through the accelerated trade on Wednesday night.
The block trade was launched at 4.30pm London time without a range and was covered by 5.40pm. Taking into account the price indications in the book, a range was published at 7.10pm of Sfr90-Sfr95. Books were closed at 7.30pm and the final price of Sfr93 was revealed at 8.10pm. Books were reopened for a quarter of an hour to allow investors to adjust orders. The Sfr93 a share ABB price set the price for the whole rights issue.
The capital increase had been proposed at the end of October and was launched on November 11.
During the rights issue, the banks ran a roadshow aimed at existing shareholders and an international one designed to attract new buyers. The latter attracted interest in excess of the total offer size.
In the end, the leads had to offer the shares at a wider discount than they had previously hoped. The Sfr93 price was a 10.7% discount to Wednesday's closing price of Sfr104.2.
“The discount was frankly a surprise to the issuer and to everyone involved in the deal,” said a banker on the trade. “These sorts of transactions have a history...