NICOSIA, Jan. 19 (Xinhua) -- Bank of Cyprus (BoC), the main lender of the bailed-out eastern Mediterranean island, said its shares started trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) as of Thursday morning.
A total of 446,199,933 ordinary shares of a nominal value of 0.10 euro were issued and traded at the LSE under the ticker symbol "BOCH", according to a BoC statement.
"This is another significant milestone in the execution of the group's strategy," the BoC statement said.
Trading of BoC shares will also continue on the Cyprus Stock Exchange, but the lender will pull out of the Athens Stock Exchange.
After an initial suspension of trading, the price of BoC shares on the London Stock Exchange rose from its opening price of 3.22 euros (3.42 U.S. dollars) to 3.60 euros, an increase of 11.8 percent.
On the Cyprus Stock Exchange, its price rose by 5.9 percent to 3.41 euros.
The bank's trading on the LSE came only a few days after it announced it had fully repaid its Emergency Liquidity Assistance funding which had topped 11.2 billion euros, about two thirds of Cyprus's GDP, at the start of the crisis that hit the island in March 2013.
