Firstrand BEE Staff Scheme Shares successfully placed

Group’s staff schemes alone generate value of R6 billion.

FirstRand today announced that 66.7million FirstRand ordinary shares and 12.6 million MMI ordinary shares have been successfully placed with both local and international institutional investors in an accelerated book build undertaken by RMB Morgan Stanley.

These shares were sold on behalf of the beneficiaries of the FirstRand BEE staff scheme to settle their tax obligations and deliver cash value to the beneficiaries who elected to sell their shares after settling these obligations.

The FirstRand shares were placed at a price of R46.00 and the MMI shares were placed at a price of R28.50.

Following the placement, the Group’s direct BEE shareholding will be 6%, comprising the FirstRand Staff Assistance Trust, the employees who elected to retain their shares and the BEE partners in the FirstRand Empowerment Trust who have agreed to hold their FirstRand shares until 31 December 2018.When combined with the 5% indirect BEE shareholding through RMH FirstRand’s total BEE shareholding is 11%.

Commenting Sizwe Nxasana, CEO of FirstRand Limited said:

“The Group is extremely proud to have been able to generate such significant value for the participants in its BEE scheme, which overall represents a total of R23 billion. We are particularly pleased that so many of our employees have benefited from the Group’s success over the past 10 years with a total of R6bn of value created for almost 13 000 people through the staff schemes.

Also, whilst our BEE partners, WDB Trust and Investment Holdings, MIT and MIC Management Services and the Kagiso Charitable Trust have agreed to retain their shares until 2018, by the middle of this year significant value from the scheme will begin to cascade down to a very broad group of beneficiaries in the underlying trusts through dividends”.