490 farmers who are shareholders of Farmer Business Development plc, will tomorrow share a €4.4m pay out as a result of a voluntary share buy-back scheme.
The move was approved by the company's shareholders at an AGM in June.
In total 3,826,584 shares are to be purchased by the company from the farmers at a price of €1.53 per share.
This equates to 2.9 times the €2m that was originally committed to the scheme.
"In view of this, the Board decided to increase funding of the scheme to €4.4m in order to minimize the scale-back of applications and meet the expectations of as many shareholders as possible," said chairman Padraig Walshe.
"This has enabled us to accept the first 10,369 shares offered by each shareholder, which was the preference level in the event of oversubscription indicated at the AGM, and to buy-back a total of 2,876,759 shares or 75% of the amount offered."
"I am pleased to announce therefore that we have agreed to buy 100% of the shares offered by 421 shareholders, while 69 applicants who offered in excess of 10,369 shares will be successful up to that level."
Most of the recipients are farmers who were asked by the then National Farmers Association to buy shares in the 1960s in what was to evolve into the FBD group of companies.
"A typical £50 investor from that time would today hold 10,369 shares in Farmer Business Developments plc," said Mr Walshe.
"If he/she cashed in that investment under the buy-back scheme, they would now receive a payment of €15,865, which comes on top of €16,920 paid in dividends and other returns over the years giving a total return of €32,785 for the €63 (£50) original investment of the retiring shareholder."
Today the FDB Group is comprised of FBD Holdings plc, which owns FBD Insurance, the FBD Trust Company Ltd which provides educational and development support for the farming community, and Farmer Business Developments plc which owns FBD Hotels and Resorts and other investments, as well as being a 24% stakeholder in FBD Holdings plc.
