Marfin pulls Laiki higher

Heavy buying on the shares of Marfin Financial Group coupled with a bullish investment recommendation from UBS were instrumental in pushing the share price of Laiki Bank to a new record close of EUR 7.46 or CYP 4.30 in brisk trading on Friday.

Laiki shares were the most active on Friday trading and rallied strongly as the share price of Marfin surged to a new record of EUR 42.80, which according to the share swap ratio for the merger between MFG and Laiki gives a valuation of EUR 7.42 for Laiki according to Financial Mirror calculations.

This was probably the main reason why the shares of Laiki rallied sharply from an opening level of EUR 7.16. At the same time, Egnatia Bank, the third to merge with MFG and CPB also rallied to EUR 9.08.

Laiki also benefited from a report by UBS, which revised its price target on CPB to EUR 10 per share, while maintaining its Buy2 recommendation. Greek investment houses including Eurobank, Alpha Bank and HSBC Pantelakis were some of the major buyers of Laiki shares during the last days.

The combination of all these factors helped drive Laiki by 5% higher on Friday to EUR 7.46 on EUR 10.5 mln volume. Next followed Bank of Cyprus (BOCY) ending 1.8% higher at a new record close of EUR 9.98 per share at a time when in Greece, the Bank’s shares closed at EUR 10 per share.

Other active stocks on Friday were Hellenic Bank (HB), up at EUR 3.40, Logicom tumbling 4.4% to EUR 1.52 despite reporting exceptionally good 9M results and Orphanides (ORF) unchanged at EUR 0.70. There was one negotiated deal on ORF at EUR 0.68 for 1.4 mln shares with both buyer and seller booked through Egnatia Cyprus.

The CSE GENX ended 1.36% higher at a new closing high of 3856.69 points on total volume of EUR 22.2 mln while the FTSE/CySE 20 index ended 1.35% higher at 1314.70 points.