NEW DELHI: LIC public offer will remain open for subscription even on weekend to enable people to participate in the mega IPO of the state-owned insurer.
This is perhaps for the first time the special dispensation is granted to any public offer.
The issue period also includes bidding on Saturday, May 7, 2022 and Sunday, May 8, 2022, LIC informed exchanges.
Earlier bidding was allowed on May 7 (Saturday) only.
To facilitate this, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directed all ASBA-designated bank branches to remain open for public on Sunday to facilitate processing of applications for LIC’s initial public offering.
State-owned LIC’s Initial Public Offering (IPO), the country’s biggest ever offer, opened for subscription by retail and institutional investors on Wednesday.
The offer will close on May 9 (Monday).
The government, in order to facilitate bidding for LIC IPO, has requested that all bank branches designated to process ASBA (Application Supported by Blocked Amount) applications may be kept open for public on May 8, 2022 (Sunday), RBI had said in a statement on Wednesday.
“The matter has been examined and it has been decided that banks may keep all their ASBA designated branches open on May 8, 2022 (Sunday) for the above purpose,” it had said.
Generally, ASBA is the mechanism through which investors apply for shares in a public issue.
LIC has fixed the price band at Rs 902-949 per equity share for the issue. The offer includes a reservation for eligible employees and policyholders. The retail investors and eligible employees will get a discount of Rs 45 per equity share, while policyholders will get a discount of Rs 60.
The share sale is through an Offer-For-Sale (OFS) of up to 22.13 crore equity shares. The shares are likely to be listed on May 17.
LIC reduced its IPO size to 3.5 per cent from 5 per cent decided earlier due to the prevailing choppy market conditions. Even after the reduced size of about Rs 20,557 crore, LIC IPO is going to be the biggest initial public offering ever in the country.
So far, the amount mobilised from the IPO of Paytm in 2021 was the largest ever at Rs 18,300 crore, followed by Coal India (2010) at nearly Rs 15,500 crore and Reliance Power (2008) at Rs 11,700 crore.
LIC was formed by merging and nationalising 245 private life insurance companies on September 1, 1956, with an initial capital of Rs 5 crore.
Its product portfolio comprises 32 individual plans (16 participating and 16 non-participating) and seven individual optional rider benefits. The insurer’s group product portfolio comprises 11 group products.
As of December 2021, LIC had a market share of 61.6 per cent in terms of premiums or gross written premium, 61.4 per cent in terms of new business premium, 71.8 per cent in terms of the number of individual policies issued and 88.8 per cent in terms of the number of group policies issued. (PTI)
