LIC IPO reflects the strength of Aatmanirbhar Bharat: DIPAM Secy; allotment on May 12

NEW DELHI: Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) on Monday said it will announce the allotment of shares to investors on May 12, Thursday. The issue was subscribed nearly 3 times on the last day of bidding.

The government is selling a 3.5 per cent stake in the company to raise a total of Rs 20,557 crore from primary investors. The price band for the IPO is Rs 902-949.

Since all categories of the issue are oversubscribed, allotment will likely happen at the ceiling of the price band.

Disinvestment Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey Monday said the public issue of Life Insurance Corp is a success and is optimistic about listing day gains. LIC is likely to be listed on May 17.

In response to a query on FIIs not investing as per the expectation, Pandey said that the IPO reflects the strength of Aatmanirbhar Bharat.

"Like all other investors, foreign institutional investors also take their own call… Foreign investors are also welcome and some of them did participate in the issue," he added.

Against 16,20,78,067 shares on offer, 47,83,25,760 bids were received, according to data posted on stock exchanges at 7 pm.

The Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs) category was subscribed 2.83 times. As many as 11.20 crore bids were received for the 3.95 crore shares earmarked for the segment.

With regard to non-institutional investors (NIIs), a total of 8,61,93,060 bids were received for 2,96,48,427 shares reserved for the category, reflecting a subscription of 2.91 times.

Retail individual investors bid for 13.77 crore shares as against 6.9 crore shares on offer for the segment, translating into an over-subscription of 1.99 times.

The policyholders' portion was subscribed a little over 6 times, while that for employees was subscribed 4.4 times.

In the grey market, LIC shares were trading at a premium of less than 40 rupees, down from nearly 100 rupees earlier.

The 66-year-old company dominates India's insurance sector, with more than 280 million policies. It was the fifth-biggest global insurer in terms of insurance premium collection in 2020, the latest year for which statistics are available.