ING sells off IWL stake
INGlast week sold its 8.9 per cent holding in financial services software groupIWL, in addition to three of IWL’s founding shareholders also divesting a large portion of their shares in the group.
ING sold some 37.1 million shares for 25c a share through broker Bell Potter along with major shareholders Otto Buttula (IWL’s chief executive officer), Paul Collins and Darren Hunter who offloaded some 12, eight and seven million shares respectively.
It is understood that a group of small cap managers were primarily responsible for taking on the released stock.
According to Buttula, the sell-off by ING reflected a maturing of IWL’s business.
“All parties have come to realise that IWL’s software business had advanced substantially since the shareholding came about, and that with IWL enjoying a strong relationship with a number of large institutionally owned dealer groups, a shareholding was somewhat superfluous to a strong vendor-client relationship,” he says.
On the dilution by himself, Collins and Hunter, Buttula says, “this dilution was aimed at benefiting the company’s long-term aspirations and that the co-founders intended to remain actively involved in guiding the business in meeting its future strategic objectives”.
ING bought into IWL in 2001 after it adopted IWL’s VisiPlan software platform across its operations.
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