IDFC to begin setting up of holding co soon: Lall

Infrastructure finance company IDFC, which recently raised Rs 1,000 crore through QIP, will soon start the process of transferring its assets and liabilities to a new holding company as part of transforming itself into a bank.
"The next step (after QIP) in the process of opening of the bank is transferring the assets and liabilities on the IDFC's balance sheet to a subsidiary which will become the bank," IDFC chairman Rajiv Lall told reporters on the sidelines of an annual banking summit organised here by Ficci this evening.
The city-based IDFC recently completed its process to bring down the foreign holdings to meet the regulatory requirement of converting itself into a bank, the licence for which was bagged the infra lender in April along with the Kolkata-based microlender Bandhan.

The central bank has made it mandatory for all those NBFCs and other financial sector players which bag banking licences, to surrender their existing business by transferring the assets and liabilities into a non-operative financial holding company.
This stringent demand made some of the leading NBFCs like Tata Capital and Mahindra Finance to withdraw their application in the run-up to the licensing process that came after 11 years and saw just two out of the 24 applicants passing the RBI test.
"With Rs 1,000 crore which was raised, foreign ownership such as FIIs, FDI, NRIs, has come down to within the statutory limit that has been imposed upon us as part of the regulation to transform us into a bank," Lall said.

He said that the foreign holding which was earlier 51 per cent has come down to 49 per cent now.
When asked why the QIP was offered at discount, he said, "the cardinal rule of raising capital is that the people you raise it from should be happy. So it is always good to leave a little bit of money on their table and not try to extract the last penny from investors. So in that spirit we gave a small discount and it was a very successful issue.