A lot of people holding on to their shares would skew the...

A lot of people holding on to their shares would skew the traditional shareholder base spread of ANZ. From the last annual report, the holdings at the low end were:

219,000 hold less than 1000 - 94m shares, 58% of all shareholders, average holding = 430 each

127,000 hold 1k to 5k - 282m shares, 34% of all shareholders, average holding = 2,220 each

Thats 346,000 'small' retail shareholders. 92% of all shareholders.

Now throw in 178,000 of these who have just shelled out an average $12,300 each to pick up an extra 850 shares each.

They are not caring too much about ANZ's Asian strategy. They do care about buying something for $14-40 that they can flog off in a couple of weeks for maybe 10% more. A large % are simply going to take the money and keep the level of holding they are traditionally comfortable with.

That's 150m new shares being issued. Daily turnover is something around 10m per day and hasnt spiked up that I can see from retail sellers selling in advance and replacing. That's quite a few new shares that will need to be soaked up.

But, the issue doesn't have a big dilutive impact - only around 12c per share. So you'd be a mug to give them away in a selling frenzy on allocation date.