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Minister Donohoe welcomes the successful disposal of part of State’s shareholding in AIB Group plc
The Minister for Finance, Paschal Donohoe TD, today (Tuesday) welcomes the successful disposal of part of the Irish State’s shareholding in AIB Group plc (“AIB”) by way of an accelerated bookbuild.
Commenting on the news, Minister Donohoe stated:
“The re-flotation or IPO of AIB on the stock market took place five years ago in June 2017. However, for a number of reasons since then, including the fallout from the Covid-19 outbreak, it was not sensible, and at times not even possible, to sell-down more of the State’s shares in the bank.
Share sales were restarted earlier this year in a gradual way through a daily trading plan. This approach had the benefit of signalling to investors that the State was once again in a position to actively consider returning funds to taxpayers, including via future larger transactions.
As announced earlier today, the State sold a tranche of AIB shares at a price of €2.28 per share which will generate €304.8m for the Exchequer. The transaction was well received by a large number of international institutional investors, notwithstanding the volatility in capital markets. As the convention with such sales is for the seller to agree to a so called “lock-up” period, the AIB trading plan has now been paused for a period of approximately three months.
The proceeds generated from this transaction together with those from our AIB trading plan, AIB’s recent share buyback scheme, and our Bank of Ireland trading plan, brings the total cash the State has recovered from the banks to c. €20.3bn.
The State retains a 63.5% ownership in AIB and I will continue, after the "lock up" period, to assess additional opportunities for share sales as they arise which can return further funds to the taxpayer.
As I have previously stated, the Irish Government believes that banking is an activity that should be provided by the private sector and that taxpayer funds which were used to rescue the banks should be recovered and used for more productive purposes. As today’s news shows, we continue to make progress in achieving this goal.”
ENDS