The Hindu Business Line : Oil India confident of IPO in March-end

“Delay in appointment of directors has proved to be a blessing in disguise for OIL as it had led to a natural rescheduling of the issue. We are now planning the issue in end March. Hopefully market conditions will be stable by that time.”

Pratim Ranjan Bose

Kolkata, Feb. 8 At a time when public issues are being called off, Oil India Ltd is confident of coming out with its Rs 1,400-crore IPO in end-March.

The issue, previously slated in February, was held up due to delay in the appointment of the independent directors to conform to clause 49 of the listing agreement.

“The search committee under the public enterprises selection board (PESB) has already selected seven persons to be on board.

“We are now expecting the appointment committee of the cabinet to approve the same in next two weeks, following which we will start working on the pricing and other relevant details,” a senior company official told Business Line.

According to the official, though the search committee of PSEB had completed the selection process quite some time back, the Cabinet approval was delayed due to Budget preparations.

Blessing in disguise

“Delay in appointment of directors has proved to be a blessing in disguise for OIL as it had led to a natural rescheduling of the issue,” the official said referring the weak market conditions leading to pull out of Wockhardt Hospitals and Emaar MGF IPOs this week. Both the issues failed to evoke due response and were finally called off.

“We are now planning the issue in end March. Hopefully market conditions will be stable by that time,” he added.

On whether OIL would revise the issue price, the official said that pricing strategy was yet to be decided.

“We will work on prices once the due approvals are available,” he said.

Issue details

OIL proposed fresh issue of 10 per cent of the company’s paid up capital through IPO. An additional one per cent capital will be issued to the employees.

The issue will coincide the proposed disinvestment of 10 per cent of OIL’s paid up capital by the Government in favour of three downstream PSU oil companies IndianOil, Bharat Petroleum (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL).

The disinvestment will take place at a price discovered through the IPO.

Post disinvestment, IOC will pick up five per cent stake in OIL. Bharat Petroleum and HPCL will get 2.5 per cent stake each.

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