Boston, MA 09/04/2014 (wallstreetpr) – Retirement, investment and insurance company Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA) announced that global financial institution ING Groep NV (ADR) (NYSE:ING) would be selling shares through underwritten secondary public offering, which will reduce its holding in the company. Voya would not be getting any proceeds from the sale of shares.
ING Sells Its Stake
The company disclosed that ING Group had agreed to divest about 22.28 million shares of Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA) at a price of $38.85 a share to the underwriters as indicated in its earlier underwritten public offering, a statement issued by the company indicated.
While Voya Financial would not be issuing or selling shares to realize any proceeds from the sale, it had agreed to acquire an additional 7.72 million shares from ING Group as part of the public offering. Voya would pay ING an aggregate $300 million to buy the agreed shares. There was no difference of cost price per share between Voya Financial and the Underwriters of the public issue.
ING Stake Trimmed
As a result of selling about 30 million shares of Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA) by ING Group, its holding would get reduced to about 32% after the completion of the transactions.
ING Group had to wind up its investments in Voya as part of the terms of bailout package in 2008, Bloomberg reported. In 2013, the company had offloaded its shares in Voya Financial through an initial public offering. Before the latest offering, it had 43% stake.
Share Buyback
Since Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA) would be spending about $300 million towards buying back its shares from ING Group as direct share repurchase, the company would have about $210 million remaining under its kitty as part of its current share buyback authorization program.
The company expects the direct share buyback and the secondary public offering to be completed on September 6, subject to numerous closing conditions.
The underwriters and the joint book-running managers to the issue were handled by Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and BofA Merrill Lynch.
