Nine cos offer to sell shares via OFS; six succeed

As the deadline to meet minimum 25% public shareholding norm ends today, nine private companies, including Tata Communications, hit the market with offers to sell off shares worth over Rs 450 crore, with six of the issues sailing through.

The other companies are Essar Ports, BGR Energy Systems, Omaxe, Kartik Investment Trust, Lords Chloro Alkali Ltd, Marathwada Refractories, Rama Phosphates and Balashri Commercial Ltd.

While six of them including Tata Comm, Rama Phosphates, Marathwada Refractories saw their OFS getting oversubscribed, the issues of BGR Energy Systems, Essar Ports and Omaxe could not get full subscription for the shares under offer, as per data with the bourses.

Tata Comm's offer for sale was subscribed 1.56 times, while that of Rama Phosphates got bids for 1.04 times of shares on offer.

Marathwada Refractories got bids for 100% of shares offered to be sold through OFS. Lords Chloro's OFS was subscribed 1.07 times, while Kartik Investment received 2.99 times subscription.

Balashri Commercial share sale also sailed through as it attracted 1.02 times bids against the issue size of 4,95,926 shares.

On the other hand, BGR Energy's OFS was subscribed 50.82%, while that of Essar Ports got bids for 75.85% of shares on offer.

The OFS of Omaxe garnered 27.89% subscription.

The share sale of Tata Communications and BGR Energy was conducted on both BSE and NSE.

As per market regulator Sebi's norms, all the listed entities from the private sector were required to achieve 25% or more public holding by June 3, 2013.

As for public sector entities, they are to have minimum public holding of 10% by August 8.

The norms were announced three years ago, in 2010, but most of the non-compliant companies began working towards meeting these guidelines in the recent months only.

During the course of the last month itself, more than 60 companies offered to sell their promoter shares to meet the deadline and have sold shares worth more than Rs 10,000 crore in the process.

Some of the major companies that recently sold shares include Jet Airways, Essar Shipping, Tata Tele, Novartis India, Adani Enterprises, Sun TV and JSW Energy.

On May 30, nine companies including Jet Airways and Tata Teleservices (M) hit markets with OFS issues worth nearly Rs 900 crore to meet Sebi norm.

On May 31, four firms, including Modern India had launched OFS issues worth Rs 75 crore.