Airtel rights issue gets oversubscribed

Bharti Airtel Wednesday said its rights issue of over 113.3 crore shares has been oversubscribed, with bids for over 119.6 crore stocks.

"The total number of applications received were 27,335 for 1,196,630,354 equity shares which is 105.561 per cent of the issue size in terms of equity shares applied for," Bharti Airtel said in a print advertisement.

The Sunil Bharti Mittal-led telecom firm has come up with a rights issue of up to 1,133,591,075 shares of face value of Rs 5 each at a price of Rs 220 per equity share, aggregating to up to Rs 24,939 crore.

"Out of total 27,335 composite application forms (including 11,830 ASBA application) received, 34 CAFs were rejected on technical grounds," the advertisement said.

The promoter group firms also participated in the rights issue, except to the extent of 227,272,727 shares renounced in favour of GIC Private Limited acting on behalf of the Government of Singapore and Monetary Authority of Singapore.

These transactions led to decline in holding of promoter group firms from 67.14 per cent in March 2019 to 62.71 per cent in May.

Stake of Bharti Airtel's majority shareholder Bharti Telecom has come down to 41.24 per cent.

The Mittal family and Singapore telecom firm Singtel-owned Bharti Telecom held 50.1 per cent stake in Bharti Airtel at the end of March 2019.

The Singapore government entities now jointly hold over 24.73 crore shares.