By Peter Kaujju

MOST Ugandans will get all the Stanbic Bank shares they applied for in last month’s Initial Public Offering (IPO), the managing director, Kitili Mbathi, has revealed.

The upper limit for Ugandans is 2.15 million shares and anybody who ordered for more will get a refund for the shares above this limit.

Sh140b will be refunded to local and international applicants. The bank offered 20% shares to the public at sh70 each.

“The process started slowly with few applications in the first three weeks. In the final week, the response was phenomenal,” Mbathi told a press conference in Kampala on Tuesday.
There were 37,449 applications worth sh211b, three times more than the sh70b the bank had expected to raise.

He said there was a good mix of local and foreign applicants as 15,488 Ugandans applied for shares worth sh41.1b and 407 Ugandan institutions applied for sh30.7b shares.
Mbathi stressed that all Ugandans who applied for sh150.5m shares would receive full allotment.

“There are 36 individuals who applied for more than the maximum. Their applications were reduced to 2,150,000 shares,” he explained.

In addition, 20,091 non- Ugandans applied for sh56.1b shares and 1,463 foreign institutions applied for sh82.3b shares.

Simon Rutega, the chief executive officer of the Uganda Securities Exchange, attributed the over-subscription to growing investor confidence in the economy and realisation by companies that money can be raised through capital markets.

The Initial Public Offering (IPO) followed an agreement between the Government and the Standard Group of South Africa, Stanbic Bank’s parent company.

Andrew Owiny, the chief executive officer of Mbea Brokerage Services, the lead brokers of the IPO, said the results indicate a re-defined market and predicted that the price would rise on the first trading day on January 25.

Stanbic will be the sixth local company to list on the exchange after dfcu, New Vision, Uganda Clays, Bank of Baroda and British American Tobacco.