Hindustan Copper disinvestment deffered till next year

The government has decided to defer the disinvestment in Hindustan Copper, which was earlier expected to happen in December, till next calendar year.

"After Shipping Corporation, there would be no public offer in December," Disinvestment Secretary Sumit Bose told reporters here.

Hence, Shipping Corporation's Rs 1,200 crore FPO, which began yesterday and will close on December 3, would be this year's last PSU public offer.

Hindustan Copper's follow-on public offer (FPO), which aims to raise Rs 4,000 crore was scheduled to open on December 6 and close on December 9.

It can be noted that the company and Mines Minister B K Handique had last month separately said Hindustan Copper Ltd's (HCL) 20 per cent public offer would begin in November instead of December.

According to sources the main reason for deferring HCL's public offer is the festive season which could lead to less participation from foreign institutional investors.

In HCL's  20 per cent equity share sale, the government is offloading 10 per cent of its stake while the company would issue fresh equity of the same proportion.

HCL's 0.41 per cent stake is already with the public. The proposed FPO will see the government holding coming down to 81.45 per cent from the present 99.59 per cent.

In June, the Cabinet had cleared the disinvestment plans of HCL. In July, the copper producer appointed UBS Securities, ICICI Securities, SBI Capital, Kotak Mahindra and Enam Securities as the managers of the issue.

HCL's stake sale programme is part of the government plans to raise Rs 40,000 crore through divestment in state-run PSUs this fiscal, while it had garnered Rs 25,000 crore through disinvestment in Oil India, NMDC, REC and NTPC last fiscal.