Synovus Raises $571M in Stock Offer
COLUMBUS, Ga. (TheStreet) -- Synovus raised $570.5 million in a public offering of shares, the regional bank holding company said Wednesday.
It sold 150 million shares at $4 apiece. Gross proceeds were $600 million; underwriting fees took the difference. The take was much larger than the $350 million
it originally planned to raise
through the issuance.
In a press release announcing the deal's completion, Synovus chief Richard Anthony said, "We believe the market's response to our public offering demonstrates its confidence in the future of Synovus as we seek to emerge stronger from this tough economic cycle."
The company, one of a
aiming to raise funds in the equity markets of late, took about $1 billion in TARP money during the financial crisis.
The offering was obviously meant to shore up Synovus's balance sheet, but the dilutive effects of the new shares have sent the company's stock lower in recent days. Some analysts say the offering will dilute current common shareholders by more than 50%.
Synovus shares ended trading Wednesday at $3.86, down 4 cents, or about 1%. The session's volume reflected the new shares; 25.6 million changed hands, compared with the daily average turnover of 8.3 million shares.
Synovus had also planned to conduct other "balance-sheet optimization initiatives," including a debt-for-equity swap, but the company made no mention of these in its press release Wednesday.
-- Written by Scott Eden in New York
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Scott Eden has covered business -- both large and small -- for more than a decade. Prior to joining TheStreet.com, he worked as a features reporter for Dealmaker and Trader Monthly magazines. Before that, he wrote for the Chicago Reader, that city's weekly paper. Early in his career, he was a staff reporter at the Dow Jones News Service. His reporting has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Men's Journal, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, and the Believer magazine, among other publications. He's also the author of Touchdown Jesus (Simon & Schuster, 2005), a nonfiction book about Notre Dame football fans and the business and politics of big-time college sports. He has degrees from Notre Dame and Washington University in St. Louis.
