Nine cos hit market for share sale to meet public holding norms

With the deadline to meet minimum 25% public shareholding norm ending today, nine private companies including Tata Comm hit the market with offers to sell off shares worth over Rs 450 crore, although they remained under-subscribed till late afternoon.

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.

Till 1400 hrs, the offer for sale (OFS) of all these companies remained under-subscribed.

The offer to sell 44,22,830 shares of BGR Energy Systems saw just 1.62% subscription till 1355 hrs, while that of Essar Ports received 24,61,318 bids against 32,46,754 shares on offer.

Kartik Investment Trust saw nil bids, while Lords Chloro Alkali received 79.98% subscription against 3,60,000 shares on offer.

The OFS of Marathwada Refractories was subscribed 74.99%, while Omaxe saw 24.80% subscription against the offer size of 2,11,60,000 shares.

The offer to sell 11,43,500 shares of Rama Phosphates got bids for 3,05,945 shares and Tata Comm's share sale of 27,50,000 shares got subscribed by 8.14%.

The stake sale of Balashri Commercial also saw nil bids.

The OFS of Tata Communications and BGR Energy is being conducted on both the 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.