SKOPJE (Macedonia), October 1 (SeeNews) – Macedonia’s Stopanska Banka AD Bitola has extended by a year the deadline for its shareholders to pool together a stake of 50% plus one share that will be offered for sale, the bank said on Thursday.
“In the agreement for putting together a stake of at least 50% plus one share of the bank’s capital to be offered for sale, the deadline previously set at September 30, 2009 is now extended to September 30, 2010,” the bank said in a statement sent to the Macedonian Stock Exchange (MSE) where it is listed.
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The statement provided no further details.
The bank first asked its shareholders to pool together a majority share package to be offered for sale in March 2007, but this deadline had been extended on several occasions.
Stopanska Banka Bitola had 389,779 ordinary shares and 1,198 priority shares, and a capital of 1.17 billion denars ($27.71 million/19.03 million euro) at the end of 2008.
Macedonian farming company ZK Pelagonija Bitola is the largest shareholder in Stopanska Banka Bitola with a 21.24% equity. The remainder is owned by companies and individuals, none of which owns more than 5.0% of the bank’s share capital.
Based in the southwestern town of Bitola, Stopanska Banka Bitola is ranked among medium-sized Macedonian banks in terms of assets. Its stock, part of MSE's MBI-10 blue-chip index, closed at 3,700 denars on Thursday, 2.8% up from a day earlier.
Eighteen banks operate in the country of two million people.
(1 euro = 61.4923 Macedonian denars)