Marking the world’s largest initial public offering since March 2008, and the largest one in Brazil’s history, the Brazilian unit of Spain’s Banco Santander raised more than 8 billion dollars on Wednesday.
Banco Santander Brasil SA, Brazil’s third largest private bank, had filed to offer 525 million units, each unit representing 55 common shares and 50 preferred shares, but the size of the offering was increased to 600 million units to meet investor demand.
The units were sold at a price of 23.5 Brazilian reais each (equivalent to 13.4 USD per ADR), in the middle of the company’s expected range of 22-25 reais.
The shares will trade in the Sao Paulo stock exchange under the ticker symbol “SANB11”, and in the NYSE, as an ADR, under the ticker “BSBR”. Each ADR is the equivalent of 1 Brazilian unit.
The IPO was the largest one in the world since Visa Inc.’s initial offering in March 2008, and the largest ever in Brazil’s history, beating the offering by VisaNet, Visa’s payment processor unit, in June of this year.
The global coordinators and joint bookrunners of the offering were Banco Santander (everything stays in the family, guys) and Credit Suisse.
According to the offering prospectus, the bank had a 10.2 percent market share in Brazil when measured by assets, as of March 2009. In August of last year, Banco Santander Brasil acquired Banco Real, at the time Brazil’s fourth largest non-government bank.
The Brazilian subsidiary of the Spanish giant is the fourth company in the group to be listed on the NYSE, joining Banco Santander Chile (NYSE: SAN), Banco Santander Bancorp (SBP) and Banco Santander Spain SA (STD). BSBR is Brazil’s 31st company to be listed on the NYSE.
The company stated on the prospectus that it intends to use 70 percent of the net proceeds from the offering to open new branches and ATM’s, 20 percent to increase funding, and the remaining 10 percent to improve its capital adequacy ratios (one of those terms we got used to during the late financial bust).
Banco Santander has a network of approximately 2,000 branches and 21 million customers in Brazil.
Think of Brazil’s recent achievements: will host the 2014 soccer World Cup, was awarded the 2016 Summer Olympic Games last week, got 2 out of the top 3 IPO’s year-to-date… Time for us to surrender to Brazilians and accept they are “os mais grande du mondo”…
Until the next update guys- Nick

Sources:
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS132792+07-Oct-2009+BW20091007 (for Brazilian companies listed on the NYSE)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125490518369670353.html (for branches and customers’ data)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/business/global/08santander.html (offering price-size data)
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1471055/000095012309049059/y79270b4e424b4.htm (prospectus)