Friday, June 22, 2007

Singapore’s Temasek, GIC set to raise stakes in ICICI Bank

Temasek Holdings and the Government of Singapore Investment Corp. (GIC), two investment arms of Singapore, have made aggressive bids for the ICICI Bank Ltd’s public issue that was subscribed 5.18 times on the third day.

The per-share pricing of the issue is expected on Friday after it closes.
Temasek, through its investment arm, Allamanda Investments, already has a 7.34% stake in the bank, while GIC has a 2.24% stake.Temasek and GIC’s combined stake will go well beyond 10% after the issue.

Under the Indian banking law, no single entity is allowed to hold more than 10% stake in a bank. Until recently, the Indian central bank was treating Temasek and GIC as one entity as both of them are Singapore government’s arms and did not allow them to hold more than 10% in the bank, jointly.

For the domestic part of ICICI Bank’s issue, the qualified institutional buyers subscribed 10.38 times on Thursday, but the retail portion was subscribed only 10.27%.Retail investors trickled in on the third day of the issue, putting in bids for 3.37 crore shares against 32.8 crore reserved for them.

Read more in The Livemint article.

No comments: