Finance
The LIC public offer will be open for subscription even on weekends, allowing people to participate in the state-owned insurer’s mega IPO.
This may be the first time that a public offer has received a special dispensation.
Bidding will also take place on Saturday, May 7, 2022, and Sunday, May 8, 2022, according to LIC informed exchanges.
Only on May 7 (Saturday) was earlier bidding permitted.
To facilitate this, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directed that all ASBA-designated bank branches remain open to the public on Sunday in order to facilitate the processing of applications for the LIC’s initial public offering.
The state-owned LIC’s Initial Public Offering (IPO), the country’s largest ever offer, opened for subscription on Wednesday to retail and institutional investors.
The offer will close on May 9th (Monday).
To facilitate bidding for the LIC IPO, the government has requested that all bank branches designated to process ASBA (Application Supported by Blocked Amount) applications remain open to the public on May 8, 2022 (Sunday), the RBI said in a statement on Wednesday.
“The matter has been examined, and it has been decided that banks may keep all of their ASBA designated branches open on May 8, 2022 (Sunday) for the aforementioned purpose,” the statement said.
In general, ASBA is the process by which investors apply for shares in a public offering.
For the issue, LIC has set a price band of Rs 902-949 per equity share. For eligible employees and policyholders, the offer includes a reservation. Retail investors and eligible employees will receive a Rs 45 discount per equity share, while policyholders will receive a Rs 60 discount.
The equity shares will be sold through an Offer-For-Sale (OFS) of up to 22.13 crore. The shares are expected to go public on May 17.
Due to the current choppy market conditions, LIC reduced its IPO size to 3.5% from 5% previously decided. Even with the reduced size of approximately Rs 20,557 crore, the LIC IPO will be the largest initial public offering in the country’s history.
So far, the amount raised from Paytm’s IPO in 2021 has been the highest ever at Rs 18,300 crore, with Coal India (2010) raising nearly Rs 15,500 crore and Reliance Power (2008) raising Rs 11,700 crore.
On September 1, 1956, the LIC was formed by merging and nationalising 245 private life insurance companies, with an initial capital of Crores.
It has 32 individual plans (16 participating and 16 non-participating) and seven individual optional rider benefits in its product portfolio. The group product portfolio of the insurer consists of 11 group products.
LIC had a market share of 61.6 percent in terms of premiums or gross written premium as of December 2021, 61.4 percent in terms of new business premium, 71.8 percent in terms of the number of individual policies issued, and 88.8 percent in terms of the number of group policies issued.
Source:IE
