125m shares for sale as CRDB investor offloads 5pc stake

It is all systems go for the CRDB Bank Ltd’s initial public offering where its major investor — Danida Investment Fund, with 27.6 per cent stake — will offload part of its shareholding.

According to the IPO prospectus, there are 125,429,692 shares on offer at $0.015 per share. Trading of the shares at the Dar es Salaam is slated for June 17.

The offer opened on April 20 and closes on May 8.

The Bank’s managing director, Dr Charles Kimei, told The EastAfrican that proceeds from the IPO will be used to open new branches and install more ATMs.

Danida Investment Fund is the largest single shareholder of CRDB Bank while local private companies control a 15.8 per cent stake in the bank, with parastatals holding 10.2 per cent and co-operatives 8.4 per cent. Individual Tanzanians hold a 38 per cent shareholding.

However, Danida’s shareholding will fall to around 22.6 per cent after the IPO as it is offering 5 per cent of the share capital for sale to the public.

In February, the bank rights issue to shareholders was oversubscribed by 87 per cent after it raised Tsh20.56 billion ($15.86 million).

Dr Kimei had said the money raised in the 10-for-1 rights issue, in which 197.87 million shares were offered, would also be used to revamp its information technology systems.

The number of shareholders before the rights issue was 11,019. It rose to to 13,425 after the issue.

Meanwhile, CRDB Bank recorded an impressive and increased pretax profit when compared to last year.

The bank posted Tsh39.13 billion ($37.2 million) net profit from its operations in 2008 compared with the Tsh37.3 billion ($53.5 million) recorded in 2007.

Besides the increased profits, the bank’s assets also grew when compared with the previous year.

Customer deposits that reached Tsh1,270 billion ($1.2 billion) as at December 31, 2008 up from Tsh1,110 billion ($1.05 billion) at the end of the preceding quarter.

The bank’s total assets rose to Tsh1,500 billion ($1.43 billion), up from Tsh1,300 billion ($1.24 billion) as at September 30, 2008.