Georgia’s TBC Bank Places Premium Shares on London Stock Exchange

TBILISI – Georgia’s TBC Bank received a premium listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) last week after it placed 49,159,880 premium shares on the bourse following the completion of a tender offer on August 4, BNE Intellinews reported on August 12.

With the listing, TBC – the country’s second-largest bank by assets – becomes the third Georgian company to secure a premium listing on the LSE, following in the footsteps of the country’s largest lender and TBC’s main rival, Bank of Georgia Holdings and its healthcare wing Georgia Healthcare Group in 2012 and 2015.

TBC is Georgia’s market leader in retail lending to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and currently owns a market share of 28 per cent in loans and 27.3 per cent in non-banking deposits, according to data from the National Bank of Georgia.

The bank’s shares were first admitted to the LSE as Global Depository Receipts (GDR) in June 2014. LSE investors own 70 per cent of TBC’s shares and have been eager to swap the GDRs for a premium listing.

The bank posted a 29 per cent year-on-year increase in profit to GEL 58.7 million (EUR 23.5 million) in the first three months of the year, while assets grew 11 per cent year-on-year to GEL 6.65 billion (EUR 2.54 billion) in January-June, according to BNE Intellinews.

Founded in 1992 by Mamuka Khazaradze and Badri Japaridze, TBC’s other owners include the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (12.4 per cent), International Finance Corporation (6.2 per cent) and Dutch Development Bank FMO (4.4 per cent).

By Nicholas Waller