Clydesdale Bank share price trades above opening offer as conditional trading starts on IPO after 24-hour delay
Clydesdale Bank’s shares were trading just above their offer price as its IPO got underway after a 24-hour delay.
The bank's shares were worth 183.5p at 9:43am in early conditional trading in London, slightly above the 180p opening value.
National Australia Bank (NAB), which sold off the Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank Group (CYBG), priced shares at 180p per share, towards the lower end of initial estimates of between 175p and 235p.
The IPO represents 25 per cent of Clydesdale shares, which would give it a market capitalisation of just under £1.6bn – a little over half of the bank's book value.
The remaining 75 per cent of the bank's shares will go to NAB shareholders.
The share launch was delayed a day after an unnamed agency asked for financial information about Clydesdale’s short- and long-term deposit rating.
Unconditional trading will start on 8 February, in what is the first major initial public offering (IPO) in the UK this year.
Volatile market conditions have led multiple companies to consider postponing or cancelling deals originally set for the first half of this year.
But Clydesdale chief financial officer Ian Smith told City PM this morning that he was confident in the sale despite uncertainty in the markets.
"We had a structure of a deal and a vendor that was not particularly concerned about market conditions," Smith said, adding. "It was a great, stable platform."
The bank's chief executive David Duffy, however, conceded that the lower pricing reflected "very strongly volatile markets".
Duffy said that with the IPO behind them, the company would turn its attention to "execution" in the months ahead.
"You've got the bigger banks, then there's us, then there's the rest," Duffy said. "We're the largest of the challenger banks, and we're the only one with a full-scale SME and full-scale retail business.
"We're in a very strong competitive position," Duffy added. "The other challengers, they talk a lot about customers, but we already have 300m customers."