URSA Bank went through with the issue of 194,163,000,000 preference shares with face value of 1 RUR each. The shares were offered at $2.1 per share, which brought the bank $407.8 million. The annual dividends were declared at $.081 per share.

The money thus obtained by URSA Bank will be spent on business development. The issue was generally coordinated by Troika Dialog, the major bookrunner, with the help of HSBС Bank Plc that dealt with the share distribution in Asia and the Middle East.

The shares were acquired by a large variety of both Russian and foreign investors. Troika Dialog reports they’ve managed to attract over 170 institutional investors, 49% of whom were British, with the remaining 31% and 20% represented by companies based in Russia and the Continent, respectively.

URSA Bank’s General Director Kirill Brel says the transaction resulted in the bank’s capital getting past the one-billion-dollar point based on the IAS.

The bank has already dealt with a preference share offering before when some foreign investors bought 90 million shares with face value of 1 RUR for $.09 apiece in the summer of 2006.

As URSA Bank’s Deputy General Director Ilya Mitelman proudly observes, ‘This was, in fact, a full-fledged IPO that was at the same time quite unique because we offered the preference shares that could be traded at RTS. Having gone through two equity offerings, we made URSA Bank a publicly known company that is worth almost $3 billion now.’