Hammond Co. Completes Buyback

The Hammond Co. said Thursday that it has completed a stock buyback program intended to restore the publicly held company to private ownership.

The mortgage banking firm, which went public in 1983, paid $976,000 to buy back 244,000 shares of common stock in its self-tender offer.

The self-tender was designed to cut the number of shareholders to below 300 so Hammond can be “delisted” from the NASDAQ automated quotation system.

Hammond will now be a closely held instead of publicly traded company, and as such will be exempt from the Security and Exchange Commission’s public reporting requirements.

Hammond said it has raised $2.2 million with the sale of 276,750 shares of preferred stock to private investors, including a number of corporate officers and directors. Part of the proceeds were used to finance the buyback of common stock.