New Delhi: The mega initial public offering (IPO) of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has seen healthy response from investors on Monday, the final day of the subscription.
According to the data from the BSE, the offer has subscribed 2.95 times, receiving bids for 47.83 crore equity shares against IPO size of 16.2 crore equity shares.
The portion set aside for LIC policyholders has been subscribed 6.12 times, while the employees of the state-run insurer bid 4.40 times the allotted quota.
Retail investors bid 1.99 times, while the reserved portion of qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) has booked 2.83 times and that of non-institutional investors (NIIs) 2.91 times.
From anchor investors, LIC fetched Rs 5,627 crore at the upper end of the price band on last Monday. This amount was primarily led by domestic institutions. The portion reserved for anchor investors (5,92,96,853 equity shares) was subscribed at Rs 949 per equity share.
Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey finally said, "It was atmanirbhar IPO -- without much depending on FIIs..."
Though LIC witnessed a decent subscription, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have steered off deeming it too expensive amid volatile market conditions and currency risks. Anchor investors from Norway and Singapore subscribed, while most of the shares in this portion went to domestic mutual funds.
The LIC IPO, which was launched on Wednesday, finally ended on Monday.
The government, which is diluting 3.5 per cent stake in the insurance behemoth, seeks to raise Rs 21,000 crore from the listing.
Earlier, the Centre wanted to divest 5 per cent stake in the insurance company, but amid uncertainties in the stock market the government only offloaded 3.5 per cent.
The IPO was slated for March this year (last fiscal year), however, was postponed till May because of geo-political tensions due to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and coupled with volatile stock market and rising inflation rates.