The sale, set to raise about Rs 24,000 crore at the auction base price, is India’s largest ever.
In the biggest ever disinvestment exercise, the government’s stake sale in Coal India on friday got over subscribed by 1.05 times although retail investors did not did so aggressively.
This will give a big boast to govt’s divestment programme. This is also the biggest ever share sale by any private or public sector company in India and exceeds the previous record of over Rs 15,000 crore made by CIL itself in 2010.
the retail demand seemed lacklustre as 12.63 crore shares reserved for these investors could get bids for less than half the size (5.37 crore). Retail investors bid for Rs 1,929 crore worth of shares in Coal India. FIIs bid for Rs 5,400 crore in the Coal India public offer.
General category investors, which include FIIs, mutual funds, banks and insurance companies, bid for 1.2 times the shares reserved for them.
Coal India is the second PSU to hit the market under the government’s disinvestment programme in the current fiscal, the first being SAIL in which shares worth about Rs 1,700 crore were sold.
Shares of Coal India closed at Rs 360.85, down 3.81 per cent over previous close on the BSE.
The Coal India issue is part of the government’s divestment agenda, and a strong investor response will bolster plans to offload shares in other state firms including Oil and Natural Gas Corp and Power Finance Corp.
Market appetite for the shares is also a vote of confidence in the country’s economic recovery.