CIL mega share sale sails through; Govt to get Rs 22600cr

New Delhi: In the biggest-ever disinvestment, the 10% stake sale in Coal India was on Friday over-subscribed fetching the government about Rs 22,600 crore largely helped by domestic financial institutions. 

Over-subscribed by 1.07 times, the share sale got bids worth Rs 24,210 crore. This is the biggest share sale by any private or public sector company here and exceeds the previous record of over Rs 15,000 crore made by CIL itself in 2010. 

However, the retail investor portion remained under-subscribed at 44 per cent. 12.63 crore shares reserved for these investors could get bids only for less than half the size (5.56 crore). In value terms, they bid for shares worth Rs 1,929 crore, which is still the largest for any divestment so far, disinvestment secretary Aradhana Johri said. 

General category investors, which include FIIs, mutual funds, banks and insurance companies, bid for 1.2 times the shares reserved for them. Of the 50.53 crore shares on block for non-retail segment, bids for nearly 62 crore shares came in. FIIs alone bid for Rs 5,919 crore shares in this category, she added. 

The identity of the domestic institutional investors could not be ascertained immediately.

The average bid price was, however, higher at Rs 360.11 for the retail category as against floor price of Rs 358. Retail investors would get a price discount of 5%. 

The total issue of 63.16 crore shares got bids for 67.52 crore shares, as per stock exchanges data. The issue got over-subscribed before the close of market hours. 

NSE’s share in the bids stood at 63%. The government had offered to sell 31.58 crore shares, or 5% stake, in CIL through a public offer, with an option to sell another 5%. 

At the floor price of Rs 358 apiece, the offering is estimated to fetch Rs 22,600 crore to the exchequer. This will make up for over half of the budgeted disinvestment target. 

Coal India was the second PSU to hit the market under the government’s disinvestment programme in the current fiscal, the first being SAIL in which shares worth about Rs 1,700 crore were sold. 

This was the first disinvestment in which the shares reserved for retail investors were doubled to 20%. A minimum of 25% of the issue size were reserved for mutual funds and insurance companies. 

Shares of Coal India closed at Rs 360.85, down 3.81% over previous close on the BSE.