New Delhi, May 9: Terming the mega initial public offering (IPO) of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) as a tremendous success, the government on Monday said the issue was lifted predominantly by domestic investors which reflected the strength of local capital market and investors. Briefing the media after the LIC IPO closed Monday evening with total subscription at 2.95 times of the offer, Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said that the success of the offer has shown that even big issues can happen without depending on the foreign institutional investors (FIIs). “This is also an example of AatmaNirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India),” he said referring to strong participation by domestic investors. The LIC IPO received bids for 47.83 crore equity shares against 16.20 crore shares on the offer. As per data available on the BSE, the quota set aside for policyholders saw a very good response as it was subscribed 6.12 times. Employees of the public sector corporation bid 4.39 times the allotted quota while retail investors bid 1.99 times. The Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs) category was subscribed 2.83 times. The Non-Institutional Investors (NIIs) booked 2.91 times. As part of its disinvestment plan, the government is selling 3.5% of its stake or 22.13 crore shares in LIC through the IPO and is expected to raise upto Rs 21,000 crore. LIC IPO is the largest-ever public issue so far in India. Pandey said that allotment of the shares would happen on May 12 and listing on the stock exchange on May 17. The DIPAM Secretary said that the IPO had witnessed strong participation from across the categories of investors. “We are pleased to inform that this offer which was made on May 4 has closed today at 7 PM and it has met with tremendous success from all categories of investors, namely policy holders where we got tremendous response and we also got good response from retail investors as well as other categories like QIBs and NIIs,” he said. On the price band of IPO and valuation of the public insurance behemoth, Department of Financial Services (DFS) Secretary Sanjay Malhotra said that the LIC IPO should be seen as medium to long term investment. “The pricing we have done is fair and we are hopeful that in the short, medium and long term the value that we have offered should give decent returns (to the investors),” Malhotra said. (UNI)
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