Bankard no longer owns the shares of Visa

Sales of Visa shares were recently undertaken by the credit card issuer Bankard Inc. The company announced that it sold its remaining 41,812 shares in Visa Inc. to Bank of Nova Scotia at a price of $55.35 per share. Last year Bankard sold the first batch of Visa shares when the credit card network conducted an initial public offering.

The proceeds from the deal are expected to come today, January 15, 2009 according to the statement Bankard made to the stock exchange. Per current exchange rate Bankard will likely to get a one-time gain of about P111 million. Earlier Bankard reported its net income of P227.7 million in the first nine months of 2008, of which P170.4 million were the one-time gain from the sale of its first batch of shares in Visa.

In 2008 Bankard rebranded its cards to RCBC Bankard following the sale of the entire Bankard business to the Yuchengco Group’s Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC). Under the terms of the service agreement with RCBC, Bankard will be managing RCBC’s credit-card portfolio while still continuing to issue credit cards under MasterCard, Visa and JCB labels.