Marston's rights issue gets 91% take-up

22nd Jul 2009 07:02

Just over 91% of shareholders at Marston's have backed the brewer and pub owner's £176m cash call.The firm, which has been criticised for earmarking the money to finance expansion rather than reduce its £1.2bn debt pile, said RBS Hoare Govett and JP Morgan will seek buyers for the 25.6m unwanted shares. Earlier this month, Charles Stanley advised shareholder to take up their rights in the 11 for 10 fully underwritten fundraising at 59p to avoid dilution. When the deal was announced last month, Marston's said it intends to use approximately £140m of the net proceeds to acquire and develop new pubs in the short to medium term.The rest of the money will provide the company with the funds to make opportunistic repurchases of some of its securitised debt and to consider pursuing potential acquisition opportunities.