Companies / Financial Services

Market ap­pre­ci­ates Old Mutual as its share price ad­justs for Nedbank sep­ar­a­tion

The final hurdle is cleared in splitting business into four separate units

BL Premium
11 October 2018 - 05:05
by Londiwe Buthelezi

Insurance giant Old Mutual has cleared the final hurdle in splitting its business into four units. The mar­ket re­acted fa­vour­ably to Old Mutual’s last step in its man­aged sep­ar­a­tion proc­ess, with the in­sur­er’s share price rising 2.2% when ad­just­ed for the Nedbank price on Wed­nes­day. Old Mutual will complete the unbundling of its 52% stake in Nedbank to share­hold­ers on Monday. About R43.2bn will be distributed to share­hold­ers through the Nedbank shares, which equates to al­most a third of the in­sur­er’s mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion. However, Old Mutual will re­tain a 19.9% mi­nor­ity stake in Nedbank. Al­though the com­pany’s share price fell 26% at face val­ue to R74.21 on Wed­nes­day morn­ing when it start­ed trad­ing with­out the Nedbank share en­title­ment, Karl Gevers, head of re­search at Ben­gue­la Global Fund Managers, said the ad­just­ed price re­flected pos­i­tive mar­ket senti­ment. “The mar­ket is ap­pre­ci­at­ing Old Mutual. We be­lieve it is attract­iv...

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