Modi govt to sell 15% stake in HAL through sale offer

The Union Government is selling 15 per cent of its equity stake in the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) at Rs 1,001 per share to raise about Rs 5,000 crore through an offer for sale (OFS), an official said on Wednesday.

"The Defence Ministry has notified the stock exchanges in the evening on selling 15 per cent of its equity stake (5.01-crore shares) in the company at Rs 1,001 per share of Rs 10 face value through OFS," a company official told IANS here.

The sale price of Rs 1,001 per share is a 15 per cent discount of the scrip's Wednesday's closing price of Rs 1,177.75 on the BSE.

The government is expected to raise about Rs 5,000 crore from the sale offer on August 27-28.

As the government holds majority equity (89.97 per cent) stake in the listed firm, it can offload a part of the stake by selling its shares on an exchange platform.

"The OFS will take place on a separate window of the stock exchanges (BSE and NSE) on August 27-28 to institutional and retail investors," said the filing.

The government proposes to sell 33,438,750 shares constituting 10 per cent of the paid-up share capital, with an option to sell an additional 5 per cent stake or 16,719,375 shares as an oversubscription option.

"About 20 per cent of the offer size will be reserved for retail investors and 25 per cent for mutual funds. Retail investors will be allocated offer shares at a discount of 5 per cent to the cut-off price in accordance with the OFS guidelines," added the filing.

IDBI Capital Markets & Securities, SBICAP and YES Securities (India) will be the settlement brokers for the offer.