NAB close to full divestment of Great Western

National Australia Bank will fully divest its ownership of US bank Great Western Bancorp if market events run in its favour over the next few weeks.

Yesterday NAB announced that GWB had launched an offer of its stock, with NAB proposing to sell 12.7 million shares into the offer.

GWB has also entered into an agreement with NAB to repurchase about US$60 million worth of GWB stock from NAB.

In addition, NAB said it intended to grant the stock offer underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1.3 million GWB shares.

If the underwriters exercise their option in full, NAB will have fully divested its holdings in GWB.

The gross proceeds will be US$385 million if all parts of the deal go ahead and US$355 if the underwriters' options are not exercised.

Full divestment would increase NAB's common equity tier one ratio by about 34 basis points.