FRANKFURT, April 13 (Reuters) - Porsche SE has successfully completed its 5 billion euro ($7.3 billion) rights issue, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.
Porsche SE, which controls about half of the voting rights of both sports-car maker Porsche AG and Volkswagen, had offered holders of ordinary and preference shares the chance to buy three shares for every four they own at 38 euros per share.
The Porsche and Piech families as well as investor Qatar, which own all of Porsche SE's voting rights, had said earlier that they were going to buy all of the new ordinary shares.
Almost all fresh preference shares without voting rights have also been taken up, two of the sources said on Wednesday.
Porsche declined to comment.
The capital hike is an attempt to keep hopes of a merger with carmaker Volkswagen alive by paying off a chunk of Porsche SE's heavy debts.
The German company turned to shareholders after it ran up crippling debts of more than 10 billion euros in a botched attempt to buy VW. It raised its stake in VW to just over 50 percent of VW's voting stock in early 2009, but nearly bankrupted itself in the process.
(Reporting by Arno Schuetze, Jan Schwartz and Alexander Huebner) ($1=.6895 Euro) Keywords: PORSCHE/ (Arno.Schuetze@thomsonreuters.com; +49 69 7565 1197; Reuters Messaging: Arno.Schuetze.reuters.com@reuters.net) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.
Porsche SE, which controls about half of the voting rights of both sports-car maker Porsche AG and Volkswagen, had offered holders of ordinary and preference shares the chance to buy three shares for every four they own at 38 euros per share.
The Porsche and Piech families as well as investor Qatar, which own all of Porsche SE's voting rights, had said earlier that they were going to buy all of the new ordinary shares.
Almost all fresh preference shares without voting rights have also been taken up, two of the sources said on Wednesday.
Porsche declined to comment.
The capital hike is an attempt to keep hopes of a merger with carmaker Volkswagen alive by paying off a chunk of Porsche SE's heavy debts.
The German company turned to shareholders after it ran up crippling debts of more than 10 billion euros in a botched attempt to buy VW. It raised its stake in VW to just over 50 percent of VW's voting stock in early 2009, but nearly bankrupted itself in the process.
(Reporting by Arno Schuetze, Jan Schwartz and Alexander Huebner) ($1=.6895 Euro) Keywords: PORSCHE/ (Arno.Schuetze@thomsonreuters.com; +49 69 7565 1197; Reuters Messaging: Arno.Schuetze.reuters.com@reuters.net) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.
© 2011 AFX News
