Microfinance lending company Equitas Holdings Ltd announced that its public issue to raise ₹2,163 crore from the primary market will be open from April 5-7, making it the first of the ten recipients of the RBI’s small finance bank licence to go public.
In-principle nod from RBI In September 2015, the central bank gave in-principle approval to 10 microfinance and lending companies to convert into small finance banks (SFBs) within 18 months. However, these companies, many of which had raised much equity capital from foreign venture capital and private equity funds, were also required to bring foreign ownership below 49 per cent. With the deadline looming, it’s likely that some of these licensees will be approaching the primary market to help their foreign investors sell their shares, according to an investment banker close to this development.
According to a person in the know, AU Financiers will be applying for a public issue clearance to RBI and SEBI soon.
Price band: ₹109-110 Chennai-based Equitas, for instance, is putting 13.24 crore shares of existing shareholders on the block for its offer-for-sale, at a price band of ₹109-110. This, after a fresh issue of ₹720 crore, takes the IPO size to ₹2,163-2,176 crore at the upper and lower ends of the price band, respectively. Its current foreign shareholding of 93 per cent will come down to 35 per cent after the public offer, according to PN Vasudevan, MD, Equitas Holdings.
The minimum bid lot for the IPO is 135 equity shares.
Axis Capital, Edelweiss Financial Services, HSBC Securities and Capital Markets and ICICI Securities are the book-running lead managers to the issue.
Ujjivan’s ₹650-cr IPO soon Bengaluru-based Ujjivan Financial Services Pvt Ltd has received capital market regulator SEBI’s consent to go public.
According to its draft papers, the company will raise ₹650 crore in fresh issue while also putting 2.49 crore shares on the block, with the total issue size rumoured to be a little above ₹1,000 crore, according to a source handling the public issue.
Other small finance bank licensees with high foreign shareholding include Janalakshmi Financial Services (75.16 per cent), Au Financiers India Ltd (62 per cent) and Suryoday Microfinance (60.74 per cent) and Utkarsh Microfinance (82 per cent).
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.