ICICI Prudential's Rs 6,000 cr IPO, first by an insurer in India, to hit market today

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance’s IPO, worth up to Rs 6,057 crore and biggest for Indian markets in about six years, will hit the capital market today. The first public offer by an insurer in Indian market would open for bidding on September 19 and is scheduled to close on September 21, during which the stock would be offered in a price band of Rs 300-334 per share. Ahead of the IPO, ICICI Prudential has allocated over 4.89 crore shares at Rs 334, the top-end of the price band, aggregating Rs 1,635.33 crore to a clutch of anchor investors from India and abroad. [caption id=“attachment_1060845” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] It marks one of the biggest anchor investor placements in the Indian IPO market. Among the 40-odd anchor investors are Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Nomura, Government of Singapore, UTI MF, Russell Investment, GMO Emerging, SBI MF, Tata MF, HDFC Standard Life, Reliance, Birla Sun Life, Kotak Mahindra, IDFC,National Pension Service Managed By Oaktree Capital Management L P and The Boeing Company Employee Retirement Plans Master Trust. The public offer comprises of up to 18,13,41,058 equity shares of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company, including a reservation of up to 1,81,34,105 equity shares (10 percent of the offer) for the shareholders of ICICI Bank. The offer would constitute 12.63 percent of the company’s post-offer paid-up equity share capital. At the upper end of the price band, the offer would be worth Rs 6,057 crore. This would be the biggest initial public offering after Coal India. The state-run firm had hit the capital markets in 2010 to raise over Rs 15,000 crore. The company, which filed the draft red herring prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on July 18, got the regulator’s go-ahead on September 2. The insurer is a venture between banking major ICICI Bank and UK’s Prudential Corporation Holdings. Singapore’s Temasek and PremjiInvest also are shareholders. ICICI Bank has around 68 percent stake in the insurer, while Prudential has 26 percent. Last November, ICICI Bank sold nearly 6 percent stake in ICICI Prudential to Temasek and PremjiInvest. The shares were offloaded for around Rs 1,950 crore valuing the insurer at Rs 32,500 crore. PremjiInvest holds 4 percent in the insurance company while Temasek owns 2 percent in the firm. At the end of March this year, the assets under management of ICICI Prudential — which started operations in financial year 2001 — stood at Rs 1,039.39 billion, as per its website. Bank of America Merrill Lynch and ICICI Securities are global coordinators and book running lead managers to the issue. Others are CLSA, Deutsche, Edelweiss, HSBC, IIFL, JM Financial, SBI Capital Markets and UBS. “We got tremendous response in the anchor book, with a lot of marquee long term investors, both international and domestic institutions participating in the anchor book. On foreign institutional front, GIC (investment arm of Government of Singapore) came with the largest application,” said a banker associated with the issue. “In case of institutional investors back home, UTI MF was the largest bidder with bids through various funds,” he added. Post allocation to the anchor investors, more than 132 million shares will be available for subscription in the offer. In the net offer, 57,122,434 shares will be available for subscription by retail investors.