Bank of Cyprus among «top-10» of UBS

…Marfin to conclude private placement

 

UBS, the Swiss banking giant has placed the shares of Bank of Cyprus (BOCY) among its top 10 shares for 2007, ranking it in 8^th position with a Buy1 recommendation based on a price to earnings (p/e) ratio of 13.7 times for 2007 and 10.3 times based on forecasted 2008 profits.

The other top picks of UBS include the shares of Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, Barclays, UniCredit, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Commerzbank, Macquarie Bank, Sberbank and Unibanco.

UBS says it prefers the European banks to the US banks and views prospects in Japan, emerging markets as well as Australia and Canada improving.

Meanwhile, Marfin Financial Group is expected to complete the private placement of up to 110 mln Laiki Bank shares among institutional investors, mostly foreign. Informed sources confirmed to the Financial Mirror that the issue is likely to close “within days”.

Marfin Vice-Chairman Andreas Vgenopoulos had previously told analysts when presenting the 9M06 results that “Marfin will book a profit of EUR 220-260 mln if all the shares were to be placed and will be included in the 4Q06 results.”

Marfin needs to dispose of the shares that it holds in Laiki (15.3%) and Egnatia (43%) before the three-way merger is completed otherwise they will need to be canceled since Cypriot legislation considers the shares as “own shares” and prohibits companies from owning their own stock.