At the Annual General Meeting of Kvika banki hf. on 14 March 2019, the shareholders approved to authorise the board of directors to buy up to 184,499,630 own shares in the company to, among other things, enable the board of directors to carry out a formal buy-back programme.
On the basis of that approval, the board of directors of Kvika decided on 29 August to establish a buy-back programme to carry out the purchase of up to 50,000,000 own shares for the purpose of reducing Kvika’s issued share capital. Kvika’s issued share capital at the end of 18 October 2019 was 1,927,449,104 and the buy-back programme therefore corresponds to 2.6% of the issued share capital, but Kvika does not currently hold any own shares.
Arion banki hf. will be supervising the execution of the buy-back programme and making all decisions regarding the acquisition of shares and the timing of the acquisitions independently of Kvika. The execution of the buy-back programme shall be in accordance with Act no.2/1995 on Public Limited Companies and the annex to regulation no. 630/2005 on insider information and market abuse.
The execution of the buy-back programme is conducted in such a way that purchases each day do not exceed a maximum of 25% of the daily average turnover of the previous 20 business days and the maximum price of the purchases shall be the amount of the last independent transaction or highest independent existing purchase bid in the Nasdaq Iceland stock exchange. The buy-back programme is in force from 21 October 2019 to 14 February 2020 or until the repurchase of 50,000,000 own shares is completed, whichever comes first.
The company’s trading in own shares pursuant to the buy-back programme shall be declared in accordance with the law and regulations.