Cabo Verde: Government expects almost €1M from 7.65% sale of ex-TACV

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Cabo Verde: Government expects almost €1M from 7.65% sale of ex-TACV

12:32 CAT | 02 Oct 2019

File photo: NewsAvia

The Cape Verdean government hopes to receive almost a million euros from the sale of 7.65% of the shares of the former state airline, now called Cabo Verde Airlines, to the diaspora, a process that began on Monday.

According to the announcement made on Tuesday by the deputy prime minister and finance minister of Cabo Verde, Olavo Correia, the sale of 74,650 shares of the former Cape Verde Air Transport (TACV) – meanwhile partially privatised – at 1,457 escudos (€13) each, will run until 16 December 2019.

In total, with this package of shares, equivalent to 7.65% of the shares, the Cabo Verde government expects to collect up to 108,765,050 escudos (€986,000).

This also means that the government is complying with another important stage in the process of privatisation of TACV, said Olavo Correia, recalling that in the previous stages of privatisation of the company, most of the capital was sold to a strategic partner.

The process is part of the restructuring of the former TACV, in which the first initiative was the sale of 51% of the company’s shares to the Icelandair, which was then renamed Cape Verde Airlines (CVA).

Cabo Verde now holds 49% of the shares and opted to sell 10% to Cape Verdean workers and emigrants, for a total of 100,000 shares, and the remaining 39% to institutional investors (390,000 shares).

A total of 91 workers of the former Cape Verdean public airline became shareholders of the company, in an operation that took place for the first time, as part of the restructuring process of the now private Cabo Verde Airlines.

According to the announcement made on 20 September, in a press conference held in the city of Praia, by the Cape Verdean secretary of state for finance, Gilberto Barros, the sale of shares to workers of CVA was initiated on 1 July and concluded on 1 September.

According to the governor, the direct sale to 91 workers was made through the Cabo Verde Stock Exchange, a total of 25,350 shares – equivalent to 2.65% of the total – at 1,457 escudos each (€13), and the workers were entitled to a 15% discount on each share.

The financial inflow for the state was 31.4 million escudos (€284,800), Gilberto Barros counted, indicating that the number of workers who acquired shares corresponds to less than 30% of the total of the approximately 320 employees.

Upon entering the company’s capital, Gilberto Barros said that the workers of the now CVA may also receive dividends if the company makes a profit at the end of each financial year.

He guaranteed that 39% of shares of the company’s capital stock would be sold to institutional investors by the end of the year, in a process where demand is much higher than supply, so it will be realised through a competitive auction.

Institutional investors believe that this company will generate profit and want to invest heavily, he said.

Source: Lusa