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3 NEWS 14.9.2023 3-for-2 issue 'a rare move in Malta' MALTA'S economic development agency, Malta Enterprise, will this year be organising its third edition of Malta's Start-Up Festival on 5/6 Octo- ber at the MFCC, Ta' Qali. The Festival aims to bring togeth- er various start-ups, entrepreneurs, founders, speakers, stakeholders and investors to network, serving as an ex- ceptional platform to promote Malta's Start-Up ecosystem. The Festival is open to fifth formers and above from state, church and pri- vate schools interested in business and entrepreneurship. Students will have a dedicated pro- gramme and participants will be able to tour the Startup Festival. For this year's Student Programme, earmarked for the 5 October at 9:30am, an array of founders and mo- tivational speakers have been invit- ed to engage with a young cohort of students to elucidate their triumphs and failures as a means to inspire to- morrow's young entrepreneurs how to navigate through challenges, the im- portance of being resilient in the face of failure and the importance of devel- oping grit, a quality that every person needs to success in life. e vivid programme will include a vast range of speakers from all walks of life. Twin brothers, Andrew and Julian Far- rugia, founders of Anvil Game Studios, shall be sharing their experience on the story behind developing one of the first and most successful local video game companies. Junior Achievement win- ning teams - h2Lo and Możaic will also share with us their success and their ex- perience in the European finals whereby they competed against 42 other coun- tries in the largest entrepreneurship festival in the world. e Edward de Bono Institute for Creative inking and Innovation at the University of Malta will be deliver- ing an innovative interactive workshop pertaining to enabling entrepreneurial thinking in students. Dana McKeon, Malta's very own Beat- box Champion (Top 5 @ Beatbox World Championships), Singer-Songwrit- er (Netflix / Sony / BMG / Universal); Performing Artist (British Royal Family / MTV / Bruno Mars / John Newman / James Arthur), Host (Beatbox World Championships / Monaco Yacht Show), and Personal Development Coach will be closing our student programme with a motivational talk revolving around perseverance and determination, on how to face failures and remain resilient in life. e Student Programme is scheduled for 5 October, 2023 from 9:30am until 1pm at MFCC, Ta' Qali. Malta Enter- prise is in contact with the schools to encourage those students with a flair for business and entrepreneurship to attend however any other participants who would like to attend are encour- aged to send an email with full details to euaffairs@maltaenterprise.com Malta Enterprise Start-Up Festival hosting its very own student programme FROM PAGE 1 The rights issue will first be offered on a pre-emptive basis to sharehold- ers appearing on the bank's register of members as at the close of trad- ing on 19 September 2023, with the last trading date being 15 September 2023. This means that eligible sharehold- ers will be able to subscribe to two new ordinary shares for every three ordinary shares they hold, at a price of €0.75 per share. This offer price represents a circa 20% discount to the price of €0.93 which, to date, is the trade-weighted average price of the bank's shares over the last six months. It also represents a discount of over 50% to the net asset value of the bank's shares, which as at 30 June 2023 stood at €1.51 per share. In the case of any eligible shareholders opting not to take up the offer, that amount of shares will then be made available to those shareholders who would have accepted their proportionate entitlement in full. If excess shares still remain after that, they will be made available to staff and directors of Lombard Bank, employees of the bank's subsidiarty - Maltapost plc - and then sharehold- ers of Maltapost plc. Lombard Bank said that the rights issue will allow for further strength- ening of its capital base both for reg- ulatory purposes as well as for the implementation of its strategy for growth. This is expected to result in in- creased profits and, subject to busi- ness requirements and regulatory ap- proval, dividend distributions of circa one third of annual profits. In October 2022, Lombard Bank CEO Joe Said (inset) came under fire after the bank announced it would ask its shareholders to approve a 2-for-1 share split that would have seriously diluted private shareholdings

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