Japan to sell US$12bil of shares in postal giant
The exercise is the country’s biggest public offering this century
TOKYO: Japan will sell about 1.3 trillion yen (US$12bil) of shares in Japan Post Holdings Co, the country’s biggest public offering this century, as the government continues its privatisation of the postal and financial-services giant.
The Finance Ministry would sell 990.1 million shares in the holding company, including an overallotment, it said in a statement. That amounts to 1.3 trillion yen, based on the most recent closing price.
The offering will be priced as soon as Sept 25, almost two years after Japan Post was listed along with its banking and insurance units.
Most of the shares will be sold to individuals, as the government bets that they will shrug off the stock’s underperformance and market anxiety over North Korea.
Brokerages including global coordinators Daiwa Securities Group Inc, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Nomura Holdings Inc would start a television advertising campaign as soon as this week, people with knowledge of the matter said earlier.
Japan Post will also buy back 100 billion yen of shares, meaning the government may raise as much as 1.4 trillion yen as it seeks to fund reconstruction of areas devastated by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in the northeast.
The deal may be the largest public offering of a single company in Japan since Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp’s 1.59 trillion-yen sale in 1999, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The government raised 1.4 trillion yen when Japan Post and its banking and insur- ance arms debuted in 2015.
Facing a recent slump in their retail businesses, brokerages are counting on the deal to obtain new accounts from households who still have more than half of their 1,800 trillion yen of financial assets parked in cash.
Finance Minister Taro Aso said last week that his ministry would monitor any impact on share prices stemming from the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.
“Markets globally are taking a downturn given the concerns over North Korea, which will be negative,” Mitsushige Akino, an executive officer with Ichiyoshi Asset Management Co in Tokyo, said before the announcement.
“Active market participants – momentum players who invest in the short term – won’t buy the stock. But individuals who are relatively wealthy and have bank deposits will.” — Bloomberg