Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 14 December 2017
Public Accounts Committee
2016 Annual Report and Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 3 - Cost of Bank Stabilisation Measures as at the end of 2016
Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Liquidation
9:00 am
Mr. Des Carville:
Yes. Regarding the 25% - the programme for Government figure was up to 25% - a huge amount went into considering why it would be that level. To expand on that, say we picked 5%, then we would still own 95%. We are dealing with very sophisticated buyers on the other side who are paid multiples of what we are paid. They are multiples better than we are whose job is to get the State to pay at the lowest possible price and ours it to ensure that we sell the shares at the highest possible price, bearing in mind that we have other transactions to make and shares to sell. It was very important to us that if we sold 5%, the other side would have felt that was not much to trade and they might look for a liquidity discount. They would think that we have 95% left and they would look for an overhang discount. I could anticipate the valuation falling. The converse would have been true had the programme for Government allowed us to sell 50% or 51%. Then we would look as though we were a distressed seller, and they would want to apply a discount on that or we could have been selling so many shares that the market could not absorb it. As I said in my opening statement, it was the second largest IPO in the world this year. A sum of €3.4 billion is a huge transaction. We had lots of advice, including independent advice from Rothschild, that 25% was the right figure to sell. That is borne out by the share price only rose 4.6% in the first day. It is what we call the Goldilocks zone. It does not get better than that.
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