Bank of Valletta is ignoring a plea by the financial services’ regulator to consider extending its June 30 property fund offer deadline, insisting investors had enough time to reflect and seek advice on the proposed settlement.

“The bank is of the opinion that the terms of the offer should remain unchanged and therefore the offer will close as planned on June 30,” the bank said in a statement issued yesterday.

BOV said several hundred investors had already accepted its settlement offer and full payment of the amount due would reach them by not later than July 6.

Malta Financial Services Authority chairman Joe Bannister yesterday urged the bank to consider delaying its deadline so that investors could “reflect calmly on the terms of the offer” and “seek good advice”.

BOV has offered a one-off settlement of 75c per share to buy back shares and compensate investors who lost millions in the La Valette Multi-Manager Property Fund.

The bank said the offer was made on May 26 and when communicating with investors it urged them to seek independent legal and financial advice.

“In the bank’s view this period of over 30 days since the launch of the offer should have allowed sufficient time for reflection and the seeking of advice,” the bank said.

While insisting that investors had a choice not to take up its offer without losing their rights, BOV also hit out at investors, who have protested at the handling of the property fund saga by filing numerous judicial protests. “The bank does not believe that a very vocal but small minority of investors should be permitted to impose their will on those other investors who choose to accept the BOV offer,” the bank said.

It explained that the 75c per share offer already took into account the MFSA’s findings that the bank breached the investment restrictions of the fund when it made high-risk investments that were not allowed by the prospectus.

The MFSA last week fined the bank €347,816 for breaching the investment restriction but BOV is contesting the regulator’s conclusions and intends to appeal the decision.

The MFSA has two other pending investigations related to the property fund: the first deals with the marketing techniques used by the bank to sell the property fund, which was intended for experienced investors only; and the second deals with accusations that some investors had privileged information that enabled them to redeem their shares just before the bank froze the fund in 2008.

The bank insisted yesterday it was certain that the MFSA would find no wrongdoing on the issue of redemptions and any shortcomings in its selling techniques would be dealt with on a case by case basis.

“The bank is fully convinced that neither of these two investigations would have any impact on the offer price,” the statement said.