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Finland reduces share in TeliaSonera
22 March 2012
Finnish state-owned fund reduces holding in TeliaSonera via €1.05bn share sale and bond placing
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TeliaSonera
Finland
Sweden
Goldman Sachs
Solidium
Finnish state-owned fund Solidium has reduced its stake in TeliaSonera by two percentage points to 11.7%. A bond sale could reduce its holding further, to 9.5%. Solidium raised €1.05 billion via the two sales.
The fund placed 89 million shares to Nordic and international institutional investors. The gross proceeds from the sale come to around €451 million, a pre-tax gain of about €136 million for Solidium.
Solidium said it also placed €600 million senior unsecured bonds which can be exchanged into ordinary registered shares of TeliaSonera. Kari Järvinen, managing director of Solidium, said: “Demand for Solidium’s high quality credit in combination with a liquid underlying stock allowed us to price the exchangeable bond at very attractive terms.â€
The exchangeable bonds are built on around 93 million ordinary shares – 2.1% of the outstanding share capital – of TeliaSonera. Solidium said its stake in TeliaSonera will drop from 11.7% of outstanding shares to 9.5% if all the bonds placed are exchanged.
With the transactions, the Swedish and Finnish governments’ holding in TeliaSonera has reduced from a 51.1% majority stake to 49.1%.
The exchangeable bonds were placed with European institutional investors specialising in such assets, as per the market practice for equity-linked transactions in Europe.
Goldman Sachs served as lead manager and bookrunner for the share sale, while SEB Enskilda was the co-bookrunner for the equity offering. Goldman Sachs was the lead manager and bookrunner for the exchangeable bond offering. GTB
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