Coop Pank is heading for listing its shares on the stock exchange

Jaanus Vihand, the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Coop Pank, said that for the majority shareholder, Coop Eesti, listing shares on the stock exchange means acting on its promise for clients to be able to become the bank’s shareholders in the future, which was given in 2017, after the acquisition of the bank. “We would primarily like to see our bank’s clients as our shareholders. This is why we are planning to give preference to the investors who have by then become active user of Coop Pank’s services in the course of subscription to our chares. In the upcoming years, Coop Pank’s shares will mainly be growth shares and could be of interest to Estonian retail investors as this will be a unique opportunity to take part in the history of growth of a domestic bank and purchase the company’s shares at the early stage,” Vihand said.

Coop Pank’s Supervisory Board commissioned the management to initiate the operations for the preparation for public listing. The process is estimated to be likely to take approximately half a year, and Coop Pank’s shares could be issued publicly in the autumn at the earliest. The specific timing of the issue would depend on the global economic situation and how it is reflected by stock markets.

Margus Rink, the Chairman of the Management Board of Coop Pank, said that the bank is planning to use the money to be raised by means of the IPO to increase its amount of business, cover new clientele segments and develop technologies. “We can see that the current situation on the banking market in Estonia as well as the prospects for the upcoming years are beneficial for the banks based on domestic capital which have an ambition for rapid growth and are prepared to focus on product innovation. We believe that exponential growth is currently possible instead of linear growth,” Rink noted. He added that the bank’s loan portfolio and market share might increase up to today’s size tripled, provided that there are favourable developments.

“As we have by now achieved the smooth functioning of main banking services, we would like to expand the scope of clientele segments on which we focus. In addition to the segment of the customers residing beyond major cities, we will start targeting urban customers who value convenient domestically provided banking and will put more emphasis on providing gas-related services to business customers,” Rink said.

Coop Eesti, which now has an approximately 60% holding in the bank, will remain Coop Pank’s strategic partner after the IPO being planned. “Coop Pank is entering a new growth phase and considers the involvement of a broad-based scope of investors who are, simultaneously, its customers and shareholders important. Some of our current financial investors, who have a 33.6% holding in the bank, are selling their shares. These investors had initially identified themselves as financial investors with the investment period of about 2–3 years.   We are grateful to these investors to their contribution to the development of the bank so far, “Jaanus Vihand said.

Coop Pank, based on Estonian capital, is one of the five universal banks operating in Estonia. Coop Pank aims to put the synergy generated by the interaction of retail business and banking to good use and to bring everyday banking services closer to people’s homes. The main shareholder of the bank is the domestic retail chain Coop Eesti comprising 330 stores. Consolidating 19 associations, Coop Eesti has 80,000 cooperative shareholders and nearly 600,000 loyal customers.