Standard Life will float on the London stock exchange on Monday with an offer price of 230 pence sterling per share, giving the company a market capitalisation of £4.65 billion (€6.75 billion), the company announced yesterday.
The initial public offer (IPO) price is below the original 240-290 pence per share range that the company was anticipating in April before stock markets took a beating in May.
It is also in the lower half of the revised 210-270 pence per share price range that the company announced in June.
The price means that up to 94,000 Irish qualifying members of the mutual life assurer will, on average, receive windfalls of shares worth between €637-€1,266. This is €93-€184 lower than the original average windfall estimates.
Standard Life's listing will end eight decades of mutual ownership and turn the company into the fifth-largest British-listed insurer. The flotation will also propel it into the FTSE 100 index of blue-chip stocks.
Standard Life, which will raise £1.1 billion in the IPO, said its institutional offer was three times oversubscribed. Meanwhile, retail demand from members was strong as they sought to take advantage of an offer to buy additional shares at a discounted rate.
Nearly 300,000 eligible members, customers and employees applied for a total of £1.35 billion worth of ordinary shares in the preferential offer. These applications were scaled back to £1.07 billion. The offer price for the preferential share scheme is set at 218.5 pence per share, a discount of 5 per cent to the offer price.
Applications of up to £2,000 for the preferential share scheme will be met in full. Above this level, applicants will receive 70 per cent of the additional shareholdings for which they applied and the maximum allocation is £50,000.
More than half of members and customers - 56 per cent - will receive their full allocation.
Members, customers and employees will own about 75 per cent of the company.
"The support for our share offers is a ringing endorsement of Standard Life's strengths and future prospects," chairman Sir Brian Stewart said. He added that Standard Life would start "an important new chapter in its history" on Monday.
"It is our task to make the most of the opportunities that lie ahead of us."
Dealings in shares are expected to commence on the London stock exchange at 8am on Monday.
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