Germany’s KfW bank sells 50 million Deutsche Post shares

By Emma-Victoria Farr

FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Germany’s state-owned KfW bank on Tuesday launched the placement of 50 million shares of its holding in Deutsche Post via an accelerated bookbuild, as the German government seeks to raise funds as agreed in its 2024 budget.

The share placement is directed at institutional investors. Following the transaction, KfW will remain Deutsche Post’s largest shareholder.

KfW’s holding will decrease from around 20.5% to approximately 16.5%, and Deutsche Post’s free float will increase accordingly, the KfW statement said.

Germany has said that it is looking at all options to raise funds by selling stakes in some of the 100 or more companies it owns.

According to documents from the German finance ministry, seen by Reuters, the government plans to raise up to 4 billion euros this year by selling company stakes.

“We have said for a long time that we are neutral about any further reduction in federal participation,” a spokesperson for Deutsche Post said.

A spokesperson for the state-owned investment and development bank KfW declined to comment further.

Bank of America, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan won the auction to run the sale, according to a bookrunner term sheet.

The shares, which represent 4.04% of Deutsche Post, have an offer price of 43.45 euros, the document states. At Tuesday’s closing price of 44.4 euros, this represents up to 2.2% discount and a deal worth around 2.22 billion euros ($2.39 billion).

Finance Minister Christian Lindner in December said Germany will upgrade state railway firm Deutsche Bahn partly with funds raised from the privatisation of stakes in companies the government does not need. The announcement was part of a long-awaited agreement over Germany’s 2024 budget.

The transaction follows a string of large stock sales at European companies in the last year, including at the London Stock Exchange Group and Heineken, as shareholders saw a chance to raise cash in a otherwise gloomy period for capital market transactions.

Some of these blocks of shares have come from governments, with Italy selling shares in Banca Monte dei Paschi and Greece in a number of local lenders.

($1 = 0.9304 euros)

(Reporting by Emma-Victoria Farr, Tom Sims and Pablo Mayo Cerqueiro; Editing by Ros Russell, Mark Porter and Chizu Nomiyama)