Government gets ₹3,994 cr via stake sale in Axis Bank
NEW DELHI: The Centre has garnered ₹3,994 crore from selling its stake in Axis Bank after the offer for sale (OFS) ended for retail and non-retail investors, a finance ministry official said seeking anonymity.
Last week, the finance ministry sold 58 million shares, or a 1.95% stake in the private sector lender, held through Specified Undertaking of the Unit Trust of India (SUUTI), to non-retail and retail investors. The OFS for non-retail investors was oversubscribed four times the base size. The government had sold 10 million SUUTI shares of Axis Bank for around ₹600 crore last year, to take advantage of the buoyant equity market.
SUUTI held a 3.45% stake in the bank as on March 31 , exchange filings show. Now, SUUTI shareholding in the bank is likely to come down to 1.5%.
In 2002, the Parliament had bifurcated Unit Trust of India after the US-64 plan ran into trouble, to create SUUTI and UTI Asset Management Co. Pvt. Ltd. The former holds the assured-return investments of UTI, while the latter oversees market-linked plans.
SUUTI has minority stakes in listed and unlisted companies. Most of its value is locked into ITC Ltd (7.93%), and construction engineering firm Larsen & Toubro Ltd (1.8%). It had earlier divested its entire stake in L&T.
The Centre’s divestment plan for FY22 may get delayed due to the second wave of Covid-19, disinvestment secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey had said at the “Mint India Investment Summit 2021” in April.
The government aims to garner ₹1.75 lakh crore in divestment receipts for the ongoing fiscal. It had collected ₹32,835 crore in divestment receipts as against the revised target of ₹32,000 crore.