First Hawaiian Directors of BancWest Corp., parent of First Hawaiian Bank, last night approved a plan to let BancWest's 45 percent owner in France buy the company's remaining stock at $35 a share.
parent’s directors
approve sale
BNP Paribas already
owns 45% of the firmFrench acquirer expects to keep
status quo at BancWestBy Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin
The board recommended that the company's shareholders approve the deal, and if two-thirds of the shares of BancWest are voted in favor of the deal, BNP Paribas will become the sole owner.
BancWest shareholders will be notified in time to vote, on a date not yet set.
The company's full board of directors endorsed the unanimous recommendation of a special board committee. After the committee recommended the buyout offer, stock prices for BancWest shot up $9.33 to close at $34.31 a share yesterday.
The offer of $35 a share is worth $2.45 billion and is well above recent share prices of the Honolulu-based BancWest, which also is the parent of San Francisco-based Bank of the West.
Walter Dods, chairman and chief executive officer of BancWest Corp., would be a major beneficiary of the sale. He owns 590,021 shares, which he acquired over many years, and at $35 a share, that would bring him about $21 million, or about $14 million after capital gains taxes. That would not be a profit. The cost of his purchases would have to be deducted. Dods also has options to buy another 954,000 shares, at prices of about $13 to $25 a share, which could bring him more than $16 million after taxes, for a total of about $30 million.
BancWest said the deal could be closed in the third quarter of this year. BNP Paribas was Banque Nationale de Paris in 1998 when it allowed its West Coast subsidiary, BancWest, to merge with First Hawaiian Inc. to create a new BancWest.
