LIC listing: Inside the all-out campaign to prepare India's biggest IPO

A knock-out debut could see state-owned insurer raise as much as $10 billion from the IPO. It would burnish Prime Minister Narendra Modi's reputation as a reformer.

In Mumbai’s sleek skyscrapers, harried bankers race the clock to appraise a company that hasn’t been valued in decades. Bureaucrats burn the midnight oil in New Delhi, working through power cuts to pull together an initial public offering to rival any in Asia this year. And across the hinterland, front-page newspaper ads alert more than 250 million policy holders of the chance to own a piece of a company nearly as old as post-independence India.

For almost two years, India has steeled itself for a gargantuan task: readying the country’s premier insurer--with nearly $500 billion in assets and a valuation