Rights issue hits FirstGroup share price

摘要

Following the announcement of a heavily-discounted rights issue on May 20, the FirstGroup plc share price responded with a fall of 30%. The three-for-two rights issue is priced at 155.6p and is fully under-written by JP Morgan, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and HSBC. It should raise £615m which will be used to write down the company's current debt of just under £2bn and underpin capital expenditure, largely in the UK bus business over the next three finan-cial years from 2014 to 2017.