Real estate major DLF Ltd has mandated eight banks to handle an offer-for-sale of eight crore shares through an institutional placement.

The banks, who have been given the mandate are Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, Standard Chartered, CLSA, HSBC, Kotak Mahindra Group, and UBS AG, sources said.

The price band and size are yet to be decided.

In April, the board of directors of the company had met to decide on SEBI’s guidelines of minimum share holding.

DLF’s founders hold 78.58 per cent shares in the company as of end-March.

The company had previously said that the proceeds from the share sale will be used to repay its debt, which stand at Rs 21,350 crore.

DLF has been reducing its debts by selling non-core assets including non-renewable energy and hotels to pare debt and also to focus on its real estate business.

It had already sold its wind energy projects in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Rajasthan. Earlier, DLF had sold 150-MW wind mill in Gujarat to Bharat Light and Power for Rs 282.30 crore.

Now, the company is left with only Karnataka’s wind mill having a capacity of 11 MW.

In August last year, DLF had sold a 17-acre land in Mumbai to Lodha Developers for Rs 2,727 crore. In December 2012, it announced sale of Amanresorts back to founder Adrian Zecha for about Rs 1,650 crore.

>bindu.menon@thehindu.co.in