National Stock Exchange, the country’s largest bourse by profits, is now hopeful of completing its nearly ₹10,000-crore initial public offering by February-March next year, a top official said.

It will refile its papers for the proposed IPO after the quarter results in September. A number of developments have happened since the filing of the earlier draft prospectus in December last year, Ashok Chawla, Chairman, NSE, told BusinessLine.

Chawla said several investors are eagerly looking to offload shares in the IPO. “Some of them are even desperate to do it,” he stated.

This timeline of February-March 2018 is a sort of push back to the bourse’s earlier plan of hitting the market by end-December this year, capital market observers said. Much would also depend on the capital market regulator SEBI, which is now looking into the ‘consent’ mechanism application filed by the NSE for settlement of the alleged ‘algorithmic trading manipulation’ case. Under a consent mechanism, a securities market offender is let off after paying a fine without admission or denial of guilt.

OFS from biggies

It may be recalled that some of the bigger shareholders such as Tiger Global, Aranda Investments, Citigroup Strategic Holdings, IDBI Bank, SBI, SAIF Investments, GS Strategic Investments and Norwest Venture Partners had decided to offer their shares for sale as part of the proposed public issue. This was reflected in the draft prospectus filed in December last year.

In the past, shareholders had also written to the NSE Board to expedite the listing process and enable them to offload their shares.

Co-location case

The market regulator’s approval for the IPO has been hanging fire as SEBI has still not resolved the co-location matter, which related to alleged preferential access given by the NSE to some brokers.

It may be recalled that SEBI had decided to undertake forensic audit on its own and not rely on the one done by the stock exchange through professional services firm Deloitte. SEBI is investigating the matter from three separate angles: the role of NSE senior management, certain employees and brokers allegedly involved in the co-location matter.

The regulator is yet to complete its investigations on the brokers involved. At least 14 NSE officials, including former CEO Ravi Narain, had received a show-cause notice from SEBI for their alleged role in giving preferential access to certain brokers in the exchange’s co-location facility.

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