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13% of BOC shares belong to foreigners, Y. Kypri says

05/09/2005 09:00
Foreign institutional investors have expressed a strong interest for the Bank of Cyprus shares in the past few months. According to Bank of Cyprus First General Manager, Yiannis Kypri, foreign institutional investors acquired 17 million BOC shares this year via the Athens Stock Exchange. In his interview to StockWatch, Mr. Kypri revealed that 13% of the BOC shares belong to foreign legal persons, 6-7% of which are institutional investors such as Deutsche Bank, UBS and Morgan Stanley. “We are considering disposing part of the rights to be issued soon to foreign institutional capital. We are also trying to list the Bank of Cyprus share in the Greek FTSE-20”, Mr. Kypri stated.

In his interview to StockWatch, Mr. Kypri also referred to the results for the first half of 2005 and the prospects for further profits for the full year 2005. “Based on the first two quarters’ results, we have profits of £15-16 million per quarter. Many analysts raise this number to all four quarters and end up with their conclusions”, Mr. Kypri said, implying that the BOC profits for 2005 will probably reach £60 million.

The BOC General Manager talked about the upcoming expansion of the Bank of Cyprus to the Balkans, analysed the benefits from certain provisions of the union contracts and commented on the write off of loans. He reiterated that they have nothing to do with the period of the CSE bubble and explained that the Bank is still making effort to collect them. Mr. Kypri finally said that BOC Chairman, Vasilis Rologis would brief the shareholders informally in October.