Intesa Stock Priced at Discount as Lender Boosts Capital

(Updates with analyst’s comment in fourth paragraph, shares in last.)

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- Intesa Sanpaolo SpA will sell new shares at about one-fourth less than yesterday’s closing price in a 5 billion-euro ($7.1 billion) offer, as the lender strengthens finances before stricter capital rules are approved.

Intesa will sell stock at 1.369 euros each and offer 2 common shares for every 7 common or savings shares held, Italy’s second-biggest bank said in a statement yesterday. The price is 24 percent less than the theoretical value of the shares excluding the rights.

Investors including Compagnia di San Paolo, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo, and Fondazione Cariplo, have already said that they will fully subscribe their rights for 24 percent of the offer.

“The stock will be ideally positioned to take full advantage of the cyclical upturn we expect in the Italian banking market,” Silvia Benzi, an analyst at Cheuvreux with a “strong buy” recommendation, wrote in a note today.

Intesa is boosting capital in response to a request from central bankers and policy makers seeking to avert a repeat of a global financial crisis. Chief Executive Officer Corrado Passera said April 6 that Intesa aims to increase the common equity ratio to 10 percent, to comply with “what is believed will become the ‘new normal’ for Basel III” capital rules.

Intesa’s investors can exercise rights to buy stock from May 23 to June 10, while the rights will be tradable from May 23 to June 3, it said yesterday.

Intesa fell 0.4 percent to 2 euros in Milan, giving the company a market value of 25.4 billion euros. The Bloomberg Banks and Financial Services Index, which was up 0.1 percent today, has declined 1 percent in the past six months, compared with Intesa’s 11 percent decline.

--With assistance from Chiara Remondini in Milan. Editors: Dan Liefgreen, Jerrold Colten

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Commerzbank to Raise 5.3 Billion Euros to Help Repay State Aid

May 22 (Bloomberg) -- Commerzbank AG, Germany’s second- biggest bank, plans to raise about 5.3 billion euros ($7.5 billion) selling new shares to help repay state aid.

Commerzbank will sell 2.44 billion new shares at 2.18 euros apiece, the Frankfurt-based bank said today in a statement. Shareholders will be allowed to subscribe to 10 new shares for every 11 already held from May 24 to June 6, the company said. New shares are expected to trade on June 7.

Chief Executive Officer Martin Blessing announced plans in April to repay about 14.3 billion euros by June through the sale of new shares and use of excess reserves. Commerzbank received more than 18 billion euros from the German government after agreeing to acquire unprofitable competitor Dresdner Bank two weeks before the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Commerzbank shares rose 0.7 percent to 3.95 euros in Frankfurt trading on May 20. The stock has fallen 29 percent so far this year, compared with larger German rival Deutsche Bank AG’s 6.1 percent gain, hurt by the dilution from the capital increase and its exposure to sovereign debt, Merck Finck & Co. analyst Konrad Becker said on May 16.

Commerzbank has said it is seeking to raise a total of 11 billion euros, with 8.25 billion euros coming from investors and 2.75 billion euros from Germany’s bank-rescue fund Soffin, which will maintain its stake of 25 percent plus one share in the company. Soffin will spend about 1.3 billion euros on new shares, Commerzbank said today.

Allianz SE will fully participate in the rights offer, according to the Frankfurt bank.

The bank on April 14 said it raised 5.7 billion euros in the first step, helped by the sale of conditional mandatory exchangeable notes, leaving another 5.3 billion euros to be raised in the rights offer.

--With assistance from Julie Cruz in Frankfurt. Editors: John Simpson, Randall Hackle

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Insurers May Owe More Than $1 Billion in Unpaid Policy Benefits

Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty, who made the estimate, said it was a “conservative number,” in a conference with reporters during a break in a hearing today in Tallahassee. Officials from MetLife Inc., the largest U.S. life insurer, and Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., the policyholder-owned insurer, were subpoenaed to appear at a hearing by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation to explain how they determine when policyholders have died.

“We want to ensure that insurance companies use as much effort to find and pay benefits as they do to find and collect premiums,” McCarty said during the call with reporters.

The hearing, which was attended by representatives from about 15 states, was held to help determine whether life insurers use Social Security Administration death records to stop annuity payments, without using that same data to identify life insurance policyholders who have died.

Liability for life insurance begins when the company receives proof of death, which is different than what happens in the annuity business, according to testimony by Todd Katz, executive vice president of insurance products for New York- based MetLife. If annuities continue to be paid out to deceased recipients, the insurer may have to reclaim those payments, he said.

Death List Check

MetLife began using Social Security data to stop some annuity payouts starting in the late 1980s, Katz said. The insurance company started using the death list to identify some life insurance policyholders’ deaths around 2004. The insurer used the death record to conduct a sweep of most of its life insurance policies in 2007 and in 2010 decided it would check the list at least once a year. When matches are made, an investigation begins and beneficiaries are contacted, Katz said.

MetLife paid more than $11 billion to beneficiaries in 2010 and turned over $51 million to the states, according to a statement from the insurer.

Using the Social Security death list “can be valuable as an aid in preventing errors and fraud and as a safety net to identify the small fraction of deceased insureds and account holders for which the company may not receive a claim in the ordinary course,” a MetLife statement said.

MetLife officials have also been subpoenaed to appear at a hearing in California on May 23. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the organization of state regulators, said this week it had formed a national task force, led by Florida, to help coordinate investigations into whether companies failed to pay benefits to beneficiaries of life insurance policies.

Hancock Settlement

The group includes members from California, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, according to a statement from the NAIC. Model laws may be established to provide more uniformity for unclaimed benefit practices, McCarty said.

Florida’s insurance office announced a settlement with John Hancock yesterday, in which the insurer agreed to pay money to beneficiaries with interest dating from the date of death. The settlement also includes a payment of $3 million to the state, of which $600,000 was waived, according to a statement from the insurance office.

John Hancock, a unit of Toronto-based Manulife Financial Corp., agreed to restore the full value of more than 6,400 accounts, denied any wrongdoing and also agreed to establish a $10 million fund to facilitate payments to beneficiaries that cannot be contacted, the statement said.

“This agreement is consistent with John Hancock’s longstanding commitment to keeping our promises to owners and beneficiaries of our products,” the company said in statement.

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SEO, Search Engine Optimization

Research, Research, Research

The foundation of an SEO Campaign is KeyWord Research. Ensuring you are targeting the right key terms, and directing traffic to the right pages, can make or break your SEO campaign. There is no point in attempting to rank highly for a term that has little to NO search volume. Furthermore, it is imperative that the page relates to the targeted KeyTerm or a visitor will leave the site as quickly as they got there.

Content Relevancy

Search Engine Optimization can be loosely categorized into two key disciplines. OnPage Optimization, and OffPage Optimization. We undertake several rounds of a Website Audit, and a Content Optimization Analysis to determine if your website can both be crawled by the search engines & if it would be deemed Contextually Relevant for your chosen Key Terms. We then suggest, and upon approval, make the required OnPage changes to optimize your site for the terms we recommended throughout the Key Term research process.

Page Authority

Once we complete the OnPage changes, we focus on building authority for your domain, and subsequent pages in your chosen category. We use a myriad of methods to build backlinks (Considered SEO Currency) to your website, through strategic manual Link Building to Site Promotions, Quality Content, select Directory Submission and Press & Article Releases we increase the overall popularity of your site & begin the wheel of discussion around your product or service.

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How Do You Get Popular on Facebook? I mean, which kinds of posts get the most attention?

Attracting attention on Facebook is a mixed bag. It’s less about the quantity and more about the quality of the attention you’re receiving (or—by translation--the number of friends you have).

Having 1,000 friends isn’t as important as having—say—600 friends who are interested in you and what you have to share/say/sell/promote. The best way I’ve found to gain and maintain friends is to post status updates that either:

a) Ask an important/interesting question

b) Offer interesting/unique information by way of a link to an article/TV clip

c) Offer a glimpse into who you are as a person.

When you ask a question, you’re encouraging people to offer their opinion, which most people like to do! When you share, for example, a news story about something relevent, you’re helping people educate themselves. And when you share an anecdote about your life, people often feel they can relate to you, which makes them want to read your regular posts.

One thing to note is that, while the content of Facebook posts is important, the frequency of said posts is equally important. If you speak up every single time you do something, your posts become “noise.”

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