Industrial gas maker BOC India, a part of Linde Group in Germany, has said that the possibility of a share buyback is still open with the company and will take a decision on it before June 2013.
As per the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) guidelines, promoters are required to reduce their holding to 75 per cent by June 2013.
“We are looking at a few options. We are open to the idea of delisting from the Indian bourses and buy back of shares. At the same time, the promoter holding may even be reduced to 75 per cent. Either way, the decision has to be taken before June next year,” said Sanjiv Lamba, chairman of BOC India. Linde AG of Germany holds above 89 per cent stake in BOC India.
Meanwhile, the firm said that the commissioning of three of its major projects are likely to happen soon.
The projects include air separation units of 2550 tonnes per day (tpd) at Jamshedpur in Jharkhand for supply to Tata Steel, a 450 tpd unit at Taloja in Maharashtra and 2x853 tpd unit at Rourkela in Odisha.
“We expect that the unit would be Jamshedpur unit would be commissioned in another 10 days, same is the case with Taloja plant. However, the commissioning of Rourkela plant will depend on SAIL’s readiness to take forward with its project. For these three projects, we are investing about Rs 1200 crore. Out of these, nearly 50 per cent will go to the Jamshedpur plant, which would one of the largest in Asia,” he added.
