The wait is over! India’s biggest-ever Initial Public Offering (IPO), that of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) kicked off for subscription for retail institutional investors today, that is on 4 May.
Since it's completely an offer for sale, all the proceedings will directly go to the government which is expecting to raise Rs 21,000 crore by selling a 3.5% stake of LIC, in a bid to replenish the public coffers that have been drained out by the pandemic.
But moving on to the pricing details, the price band for this IPO has been set at Rs 902-949 per share for sale of 22.13 crores equity shares. There is also a discount offer of Rs 60 per share for its policyholders and Rs 45 apiece for retail investors and LIC employees. The LIC IPO will close on 9 May and the company will be listed on the stock exchange on 17 May.
And the first two hours of the first day of bidding itself saw a pretty decent response with a subscription of around 28 percent by 12 noon. By the time of the recording of this podcast, it was at 58 percent.