Reference is made to the stock exchange notice dated 7 May 2009 regarding a contemplated private placement in Marine Harvest ASA (the "Company" or "Marine Harvest").
The Company has today successfully completed the pre-sale of the planned private placement of a total of 96,000,000 shares at a subscription price of NOK 3.15 per share. Gross proceeds from the transaction will amount to NOK 302.4 million.
These proceeds will, until the Company's general meeting resolves to complete the private placement in its ordinary general meeting on 27 May, be placed on a bank account pledged in favor of the Company's largest shareholder, Geveran Trading Co. Ltd. ("Geveran"), as security for the obligations of Carnegie ASA ("Carnegie"), in their capacity as bookrunner and settlement agent for the private placement, to redeliver the shares borrowed by Carnegie in order to settle the pre-sale transaction.
The purpose of the private placement is to finance the restructuring of the Company's operations in Chile, improve the financial position of the Company in general and facilitate an agreement with the Company's lenders to adjust the covenant structure in the company's loan agreements for the second, third and fourth quarter of 2009.
Geveran was allocated a total of 20 million shares in the pre-sale.
The buyers of the shares in the pre-sale of the private placement will receive shares that are already listed on Oslo Stock Exchange. The shares will thus be tradable from the date they are delivered.
On the assumption that the private placement is completed, the share capital of Marine Harvest will increase to NOK 2,681,173,747 consisting of 3,574,898,329 ordinary shares with a NOK 0.75 par value. Each ordinary share in Marine Harvest has one vote in the company's General Meeting.
After the registration of the share capital increase, Geveran will hold 1,099,632,775 shares in Marine Harvest, equating to an ownership of 30.76% of the Company's outstanding shares. In addition, Geveran holds TRS agreements with an underlying exposure to 80 million shares in Marine Harvest.
Carnegie acted as joint lead manager and bookrunner in the pre-sale of the private placement with ABN AMRO Bank N.V (London Branch) acting as joint lead manager and ABG Sundal Collier, DnB NOR Markets and Nordea as co-lead managers.
Oslo, 8 May 2009
For further enquiries, please contact:
Jørgen K. Andersen (CFO) +47 951 43 854
Henrik Heiberg (VP Finance & Treasury) +47 917 47 724
This information is subject of the disclosure requirements acc. to §5-12 vphl (Norwegian Securities Trading Act).