New investors push BOC higher

Tuesday close at EUR 4.16

The arrival of new foreign fund managers helped propel the shares of Bank of Cyprus trading in Greece to EUR 4.16 or CYP 2.39, just under its all-time record high of EUR 4.18 or CYP 2.395 reached last month.

BOC shares rallied 4% on Tuesday to EUR 4.16 on 1.26 mln shares volume for a value of EUR 5.18 mln or CYP 2.96 mln, which was more than triple the total volume transacted on the CSE that amounted to CYP 677.000.

On the CSE, the Bank of Cyprus shares closed 1.7% higher at CYP 2.30 on 133,000 shares volume or CYP 306,000, while Laiki Bank shares were unchanged at CYP 1.62, with market participants failing to react to news that the Bank will proceed with a rights issue to raise CYP 75 mln. Hellenic Bank was up 3.7% at 55 cent, while Louis Group Public Co. was unchanged at 19 cent. The GENX was 0.88% higher at 97.61 points, while the CSE Main/Parallel index was up 1.24% at 1451.39 points.

Following our report last week where we revealed that Morgan Stanley had upped its stake to 6.2 mln shares in BOC, fresh information obtained by the Financial Mirror reveal that most of the big names mentioned in our previous report maintained their positions. They are, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Bayeriche, Boeing Co. Employees Retirement Plan, and Pheonician Fund.

New entrants to the BOC share register in Greece include Credit Agricole- Suisse with 250,000 shares, Global Stock Fund 250,000 shares, Credit Suisse Zurich 233,000, Newstark Hedge Fund 230,000, Cout?s Bank-Switzerland 161,000, ABN Amro London 150,000, HSBC Private Bank- Opportunity Fund 130,000. Other entrants include among others Martin Currie Inv. Funds 203,580 and LBIE with 236,048 shares.