Insurers issuing shares

Lietuvos Draudimas, Lithuania's leading insurance company, is launching a targeted share issue worth 5 million litas (1.4 million euros) at par, raising its authorized capital to 28.1 million litas.

The new share issue was registered with the Lithuanian Securities Commission on May 8, according to Aurelija Gasiuniene, head of the supervisory institution's registration department.

She said the share subscription period would start on May 9 and run for 10 days.

Lietuvos Draudimas, which as a 41 percent share of the domestic general and credit insurance market and a 51 percent share of the life insurance market in the first quarter of 2003, is issuing 145,600 ordinary registered shares with a face value of 35 litas each.

The Danish insurer Codan, the company's majority shareholder, is to purchase the whole share issue at 160 litas a share.

Lietuvos Draudimas' shareholders gave the go-ahead for the new share issue on March 26.

Vidmantas Maksimaitis, director of Lietuvos Draudimas' legal department, said earlier that Codan would acquire the new share issue as part of its investment commitments.

Codan bought 70 percent of shares in Lietuvos Draudimas in 1999. The Danish company then committed itself to investing 100 million litas in the insurer over a period of five years.

So far Codan has invested 76.7 million litas and will have fulfilled its investment commitments following the acquisition of the new issue.

Lietuvos Draudimas is a member of the international insurance group Royal & SunAlliance.