RBL to raise Rs 832 crore in fresh issue through IPO

The bank has already raised Rs 488 crore through a pre-IPO placement

Private-sector lender RBL Bank will raise fresh equity of Rs 832.5 crore in its initial public offering. The bank, which first filed its draft red herring prospectus in June last year with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), had planned to raise Rs 1,100 crore which included a pre-IPO placement of up to Rs 500 crore.  

In December, it had raised Rs 488 crore from Asian Development Bank and the UK-based CDC group, completing the pre-IPO placement. The bank will use the money raised through the issue for boosting its tier-I capital base, for growing its assets and to ensure compliance with Basel-II norms.

RBL has also brought down the size of its offer for sale (OFS) in the IPO to about 16.9 million shares now from 17.5 mn shares 14 months earlier. Though private equity investors Beacon India and GPE India have stuck with their plan to sell about 13 mn shares together, some individual investors have withdrawn their plan to sell in the IPO, shrinking the size of the OFS by 600,000 shares.

“With better performance of the secondary market, some individuals might have postponed their sell-off plans,” said a banker.  

RBL's IPO was stuck for about a year because of a pending case against it for breach of the disclosure norms related to issue of shares worth Rs 600 crore to select investors. In June this year, Sebi accepted the bank's settlement offer and decided to end the proceedings it had initiated. This paved the way for the IPO, for which the revised documents are still not in the public domain.