United Spirits' offer-for-sale to dilute 6.99 per cent stake in Pioneer Distilleries gets a poor response even after the company fixed the floor price at Rs 38, a discount of over 20 per cent to Monday's closing price. As against an offer for 9.36 lakh shares, United Spirits received bid for 55,100 shares only.

However, the other offer-for-sale from Xchanging Solutions, which kept the floor price at Rs 10, has been successful. As against promoters' offer of 6.86 lakh shares, bids were received for 8.57 lakh shares. Based on the minimum bidding price, the sale would have fetched about Rs 3.55 crore to Vijay Mallya-promoted United Spirits.

Shares tumble

Shares price of both the companies plunged to a maximum possible limit on Tuesday, as both the companies fixed the floor price much lower to the prevailing market price. While Xchanging crashed 19.7 per cent to Rs 16.9, the Pioneer Distilleries stock tumbled 5 per cent to Rs 45.65 on the BSE.

Both the companies' move is to meet the SEBI guideline of maintaining at least 25 per cent public share holding. The deadline for minimum public holding expires next June. Currently, USL holds 81.99 per cent stake in Pioneer Distilleries. Xchanging Solutions’ promoters holding stands at 75.62, a tad above the SEBI prescribed public holding.

So far promoters of nine companies, including ONGC, Wipro, DB Corp, JP Ventures, Fresenius Kabi Oncology and Adani Power have tapped offer-for-sale route to dilute their stake. Promoters of Godrej Industries and Godrej Properties have diluted their stake institutional private placement (IPP) route.

The offer-for-sale and IPP were introduced by market regulator SEBI early this year that allows companies to sell shares in a simplified process on the stock market platform through one-day bidding.

>badrinarayanan.ks@thehindu.co.in

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