Housing & Commercial Bank to list ADRs on the NYSE

Housing & Commercial Bank of Korea would be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, the first time among Korean commercial banks. The bank would be the fifth Korean company to list on the stock exchange after KEPCO, POSCO, SK Telecom and Korea Telecom and the third among Asian financial institutions.

Housing & Commercial Bank of Korea on Tuesday, New York time, announced that it would list its American depository receipts (ADRs) on the New York Stock Exchange. The bank asserted that there would be no new issuance but the already issued and traded global depository receipts on the London Stock Exchange and the domestically issued common stocks would be converted into ADRs with a limit of 100 Million shares.

The conversion ratio is set at one domestically issued common stock for 2 ADRs and one GDR (on London Exchange) for 2 ADRs. Consequently, 2ADRs would have one voting right.

Housing & Commercial Bank of Korea would send out ADR conversion notices to holders of GDR and would abrogate trading of GDRs on the London Stock Exchange after the deadline of Oct. 31.

The price of an ADR would be known once it is being traded. Currently, GDRs are traded between US$23 to US$24.

Lee Na-Yeon larosa@donga.com