Waterbury super-regional lender Webster Financial Corp. says it paid $14.4 million for a big chunk of warrants held by U.S. taxpayers stemming from its 2008 financial bailout.
Webster said it paid $6.30 apiece for 3,282,276 warrants that give the holder the future right to buy its stock at a set price. The warrants Webster bought were 70 percent of the total in taxpayers hands, authorities said Friday.
“We put in a bid in in order to minimize [shareholder] dilution,” said Webster spokesman Bob Guenther.
Who bought the rest unclear Friday. Guenther said he didn’t know and referred queries to the Treasury Department.
A Treasury spokesman declined in an email to identify the other buyer or buyers, citing its policy of confidentiality. The spokesman would only confirm the $6.30 a warrant price for all buyers.
Guenther said the bank will simply hang onto the warrants until they expire on Nov. 21, 2018.
The Treasury said it expects to reap about $21 million from the sale of Webster’s warrants. The government obtained them as part of its $400 million recapitalization of Webster at the peak of the global financial meltdown in December 2008.
Webster has since repaid the money. The warrant sale officially ends all government ownership interest in Webster, Guenther said.
