Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc (GTCO) has increased its investment in its wholly owned banking subsidiary, Guaranty Trust Bank Ltd. (GTBank), raising the bank’s paid-up capital to N504 billion.

The bank disclosed the development in a statement released on Thursday in Lagos. The capital increase came following GTCO’s subscription to GTBank’s rights issue of 6,994,050,290 ordinary shares at 50 kobo each, valued at approximately N365.85 billion.

This significant injection raised GTBank’s paid-up share capital from N138.19 billion to N504.04 billion.

According to the statement, “Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc has announced that it has increased its investment in its wholly owned banking subsidiary, Guaranty Trust Bank Limited (‘GTBank’) to N504 billion. This was achieved through a rights issue subscription for 6,994,050,290 ordinary shares of fifty kobo each, amounting to a total consideration of N365,850,403,572.67. Consequently, GTBank’s paid-up share capital increased from N138,186,703,485.78 to N504,037,107,058.45.”

The capital boost ensures GTBank’s compliance with the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) new minimum capital requirement for commercial banks with international authorisation.

This injection was funded through GTCO’s recently concluded two-phase equity capital raising programme, which included an international fully marketed offering on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). The LSE offering secured $105 million from high-quality, long-term institutional investors in exchange for 2.29 billion new ordinary shares.