Ahead of its much-awaited IPO, National Stock Exchange (NSE) allocated 37.79 million shares at the upper end of its price band Rs 1,785 per share to its anchor investors. The bourse has raised Rs 6,746 crores through allocation to its anchor investors. NSE’s anchor allotment was the third biggest in the history of Indian stock markets following the anchor books of Hyundai Motor India and One97 Communications (parent company of Paytm). Existing shareholders like Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), NSE’s existing largest stakeholder which did not participate in the offer for sale, and SBI, which is selling 1% of its stake in the offer for sale, also participated in the anchor book. NSE said that this was a testament to the growth opportunity of the exchange. Both stakeholders received anchor allotment of over Rs 400 crore. While LIC participated through three entities: LIC (Rs 400.3 crore), LIC ULIP Growth Fund (Rs 40 crore), LIC New Pension Plus Growth Fund (Rs 10 crore) and LIC Pension Fund Scheme (through NPS scheme) (Rs 15 crore). SBI participated through its mutual fund and pension fund schemes.
NSE shared that it received strong interest with bids of about Rs 1.2 lakh crore, 20x the anchor book size, from over 150 investors which also included foreign institutional investors like sovereign wealth funds, regional and global mutual funds across geographies including US, Europe and Asia. The foreign portfolio investors were allotted shares of Rs 2,883 crore, about 43% of the anchor book. Prominent FPIs which have received allotment include overseas derivative instrument of France’s bank Societe Generale (Rs 315 crore) and BNP Paribas (RS 175 crore), Norway-based world’s largest sovereign wealth fund Government Pension Fund Global (Rs 250 crore), Singapore’s central bank Monetary Authority of Singapore (Rs 200 crore), Abu-Dhabi based sovereign wealth fund Abu Dhabi Investment Authority Monsoon (Rs 200 crore), two SPVs of Abu Dhabi-based LSOI, two schemes of US-based Fidelity Investments (Rs 194 crore) and a Mauritus-based Dendana Investment managed by Fidelity (Rs 6.33 crore).
Domestic mutual funds, insurers and pension funds received about 53% of the total anchor book allotment. Among domestic institutional investors, 29 domestic mutual fund houses received 13.98 million shares, about 37% of the total allocation to anchor investors while 27 life insurance and pension funds received 6.06 million shares, 16% of the total anchor allocation. SBI’s banking and financial services fund received the highest allotment for a scheme (Rs 100 crore) while schemes of ICICI Prudential AMC, HDFC AMC, Nippon India Mutual Fund, Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC and Kotak Mahindra AMC among others received aggregated allotment of about Rs 140 crore each.
Among life insurers and pension funds, besides LIC, major allotment was received by NPS pension schemes of SBI Pension Funds, SBI Life Insurance (Rs 150 crore) and HDFC Life Insurance (Rs 150 crore). Other entities in the category with considerable allotment included HDFC Pension Fund and Axis Max Life Insurance.
Following the anchor investment, the issue size of the IPO will be about Rs 15,815 crore. The issue will remain open for subscription from September 17 to September 21 with listing on the rival bourse BSE expected by September 25.