Citi Looking to Raise as Much as $1B With Redecard Stock Sale

SAO PAULO — Citigroup Inc. is planning to sell at least 82 million of its shares in Brazilian credit-card networking services provider Redecard SA through a secondary offer on the Brazilian Stock Exchange, or Bovespa, according to the preliminary prospectus of the offer published late Monday.

The shares will be sold in Brazil and also to foreign investors in the form of Global Depositary Receipts, or GDRs. Each GDR will represent two common shares.

The period to reserve shares will run from March 19 to March 23. The shares under the offer are set to begin trading March 26.

Citigroup said it could increase the offer through an extra lot of shares, selling a total of 106.7 million shares.

The offer, also considering the extra lot of shares, could raise around 2.4 billion Brazilian reals ($1.01 billion) based on Redecard's closing price Monday of BRL22.60 on the Bovespa.

Redecard is jointly controlled by Brazilian banking giant Itau-Unibanco and Citigroup. Currently, Itau-Unibanco has a combined 46.42% stake in Redecard, while Citigroup has a 17% stake.

Currently, Citigroup, through its Citibank division, has total of 114.4 million Redecard's shares, according to the prospectus of the offer. Citigroup is the lead coordinator of the operation.

Itau-Unibanco was formed late last year by the merger of Itau, at that time Brazil's third-largest bank, and Unibanco, at that time the country's fourth-largest bank.

The Brazilian giant bank has the option to acquire up to 24 million of the shares under the current offer.

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