Government slashes its LIC IPO size down to 31.6 shares after muted feedback from investors, looks forward to completing the listing by 2nd May, according to the reports.
According to government officials, the government has decided to slash the IPO size of the government owned insurance behemoth, down to 5% or 31.6 crore shares for 30,000(roughly $3.9 billion). Officials are looking to complete the listing process in next 2 weeks as SEBI approvals and draft prospectus lapse on 12th of may 2022.
LIC had filed its draft papers with SEBI on 13 February this year for IPO. Earlier the administration was looking to dilute its 7% of share in LIC to raise around Rs. 55000-60000.
LIC would be valued around 6 lakh crore rupees, reports say.
Administration has a time window till 12th may to launch LIC IPO without filing fresh papers with SEBI and if it misses the window available with it, LIC would have to file fresh papers with SEBI giving the results of December quarter and also update the embedded value.
Government wanted to list the LIC IPO in its last financial year only that ended on 31st march, but failed to do so, due to geo-political tension between Russia – Ukraine and Volatile global markets.
LIO IPO is crucial for the government because it would contribute a major chunk to the budgeted divestment proceeds in the current fiscal year. The government has pegged its divestment receipts at Rs 65,000 crore for fiscal year 2022-23, up from Rs 13,531 crore last fiscal year.
Talking of IPO’s, firms in India have raised about $1.1 billion through IPOs this year, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That’s less than half of nearly $3 billion raised in the same period in 2021. Interestingly the amount raised from IPO of Paytm in 2021 was the largest ever at ₹18,300 crore, followed by Coal India (2010) at nearly ₹15,500 crore.
