Duncan Boyle and Isabel Hudson are to retire as non-executive directors on the
QBE board on 31
st December.
The insurer also revealed that Jann Skinner and Stephen Fitzgerald have been appointed as non-executive directors effective 1 October and group chief financial officer Pat Regan will also join the board, on that date, as an executive director.
Skinner is a non-executive director of QBE Australia and is chair of the audit committee and risk and capital committee of QBE Australia.
Fitzgerald, among other roles, is on
ASIC’s external advisory panel.
QBE’s Chairman Marty Becker said the retirements and appointments were a continuing part of the planned board succession process undertaken over the past two years and allowed a suitable transition period for the incoming directors to benefit from the experience of Hudson and Boyle.
In other news, QBE has increased the size of its share purchase plan from $160m to $200m after more than 50,000 shareholders applied for shares under the share purchase plan (SSP).
The insurer, which also revealed the SSP issue price is $10.10, said the subscriptions are substantially greater than the $160m that it planned to raise through the SSP and despite increasing the SSP to $200m it still “remains heavily oversubscribed” and it now plans to adopt a scale back approach.
The scale back will be undertaken on the basis of valid applications receiving allotments that are the smaller than the parcel validly applied for; and approximately 17% of the number of shares held by the applicant on the SSP record date.
QBE said it estimates the scale back approach will result in at least 98% of valid applicants receiving the equivalent of a pro rata allocation or better from the combined total of shares issued under both the institutional share placement and the SPP.
It added: “As QBE will be refunding amounts to investors due to the scale back it will also be paying to those investors the interest that has been received on the scale back refunds for the period from after the close of the SPP (13 September 2014) to the day prior to allotment (30 September 2014).”
QBE expects the SSP allotment and refunds to be on 1
st October, new shares to be issued under SSP on 2
nd October and the dispatch of allotment and refund advice to occur on 3
rd October.
