In its last disinvestment exercise for the current fiscal, the government finally managed to raise about Rs 1,500 crore by offloading 5.82% of its stake in Steel Authority of India (SAIL) through the OFS (offer for sale) route. Given the prevailing negative sentiment of the market in the previous week, the steel major’s OFS bids got subscribed 1.003 times for 24.13 crore shares as against 24.03 crore shares on offer.
Apparently, State-owned insurance behemoth Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) once again came to the government’s rescue on Friday with a bid of approximately Rs 600 crore for SAIL shares. According to bankers, foreign institutional investors bid for 20% of the issue, other domestic institutions for 20%, banks for 10% and retail investors for 10%.
Thus, with this the government would have raised Rs 23,778 crore in 2012-13 by selling shares in state-owned companies, which is slightly lower than the scaled-down target of Rs 24,000 crore and much below the original target of Rs 30,000 crore for FY13.
