Finance History | 11 Wall Street — Sixteen Dollars, Then One Signet Share for One

People treat Capital One as a McLean credit-card bank that always printed COF.

The 1994 issuer was a slice of Signet Bank's card book, folded into a new Delaware holding company on 21 July 1994.

Capital One's investor FAQ dates the initial public offering to 16 November 1994 and prices it at 16 dollars a share.

A later company filing recorded completion on 22 November 1994 of 7,125,000 shares at that same 16-dollar price, and called the sold slice 11.5 percent of the common stock then outstanding.

On 28 February 1995 Signet distributed its remaining Capital One shares, one Capital One share for each Signet common share of record on 10 February 1995.

The FAQ splits tax basis 49.31 percent to the new Capital One line and 50.69 percent to the Signet stub.

The mechanism is a two-step separation. A minority IPO put a price on the card book. A later tax-free distribution finished the spin.

Holders of Signet did not write a second check. They received the rest of the line after the market had already priced the first 11.5 percent.

The pin is the Broad Street facade of the Exchange, where COF first printed. Interior trading is not visitable from the sidewalk.

Photo: Arild Vagen, August 2017, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. New York Stock Exchange from Broad Street.