The government will list the country’s largest insurance company LIC on the stock exchanges by the end of March. A top official gave this information on Thursday.
The draft of LIC’s initial public offering (IPO) is being finalized and will soon be filed with market regulator SEBI for approval.
Tuhin Kanta Pandey, Secretary, Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM), said, “LIC’s disinvestment amount will be included in this year’s (Budget) as we aim to list it before March 31.”
The LIC IPO is crucial to meet the disinvestment target set for the current financial year ending March 2022.
Budget 2021-22 sets disinvestment target 1.75 lakh crore, as against 32,835 crore was raised in the last financial year. Of 1.75 lakh crore, 1 lakh crore is to come from sale of government stake in public sector banks and financial institutions, and 75,000 crore CPSE disinvestment proceeds.
so far in this financial year Rs 9,330 crore has been raised through minority stake sale in PSUs.
The Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) had earlier this week reported profit after tax of 1,437 crore for the first half (April-September) of the current financial year, as compared to 6.14 crore in the year-ago period.
Its new business premium growth rate stood at 554.1 per cent in the first half of FY12, up from 394.76 per cent earlier.
The government in September last year appointed 10 merchant bankers including Goldman Sachs (India) Securities Pvt Ltd, Citigroup Global Markets India Pvt Ltd and Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) Pvt Ltd to manage the insurance giant’s mega initial public offering. did. ,
Other selected bankers include SBI Capital Markets Limited, JM Financial Limited, Axis Capital Limited, BofA Securities, JP Morgan India Private Limited, ICICI Securities Limited and Kotak Mahindra Capital Company Limited.
Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas has been appointed as the legal advisor to the IPO.
The government is in the process of finalizing the quantum of its stake which will be sold through the IPO.
It is also looking at allowing foreign investors to take stake in LIC. As per SEBI regulations, Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) are allowed to buy shares in a public offering. However, since there is no provision for foreign investment in the LIC Act, LIC IPO needs to align with SEBI norms with regard to foreign investor participation.
This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.
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