Axis Bank, India’s third largest private sector lender, on Monday applied to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) to increase its foreign shareholding limit.
The Reserve Bank of India had issued a notice to the bank on August 14 notifying that the foreign shareholding in the bank had crossed the overall limit of 49 per cent of its paid-up capital and that no further purchases of shares of the bank would be allowed.
The bank has filed an application to the stock exchanges in this regard.
The RBI release notified that “the foreign shareholding by Global Depository Receipt (GDR)/American Depository Receipts (ADR)/Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)/Non-Resident Indian (NRI)/Persons of Indian Origin (PIO)/Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) in Axis Bank has crossed the overall limit of 49 per cent of its paid-up capital and that no further purchases of shares of the bank would be allowed through stock exchanges in India on behalf of GDR/ADR/FDI/NRI/PIO/FIIs.”
The foreign shareholding in the bank as on June 30, 2013 was 48.96 per cent. This includes investments through the FDI (foreign direct investment) route in the form of Global Depository Receipts of 8.08 per cent and other foreign holdings, including FIIs, of 40.88 per cent.