Kolkata: The ball has finally been set rolling after a 10-year wait for the NSE IPO. NSE is the bigger of the two stock exchanges in India and on Friday, its board formally approved the long-awaited initial public offering and reconstituted the committee to oversee the public issue. It was decided that the IPO will have no fresh issue but will only consist of an OFS segment, which means the proceeds of the IPO will not go to the company at all but to the promoters/shareholders who decide to sell their shares. The Sebi NOC came on Jan 30.
According to the reports, the new committee members to oversee the listing process are Tablesh Pandey, a non-independent director who will also chair the body. The other members on the committee are Srinivas Injeti, Mamata Biswal, Abhilasha Kumari and G Sivakumar. the MD and CEO of NSE Ashishkumar Chauhan will also be a member on it. The board has tasked this committee with supervising and facilitating various IPO-related processes and focus on governance, compliance and procedural discipline.
In a statement, NSE said, “Considered and approved undertaking an initial public offering (IPO) through an offer for sale by existing shareholders of the company (OFS), for the listing of the equity shares of face value of Re 1 each of the company.”
The way forward
NSE MD and CEO Chauhan has told the media that they could take about four months after receiving Sebi’s NOC to file the Draft Red Herring Prospectus. Then Sebi has to approve it. It could take NSE about seven-eight months for the IPO to hit the market from the Sebi NOC.
Meanwhile, interest in the NSE IPO reached such a stage that there was a rush to buy shares from the grey market and now NSE has as many as about 1.77 lakh shareholders. The firm is said to be valued at more than Rs 5 lakh crore in the grey market.
Culmination of a decade-long effort
When NSE first approached Sebi with a proposal to raise capital from the market in 2016, the size of the proposed issue was Rs 10,000. However, concerns over transparency led the regulator to turn down the proposal. It cited concerns over governance lapses and the co-location case and every time NSE approached it, Sebi refused the clearance. Early in Jan, month, Sebi chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey said they have finally cleared the hurdles and have granted “in-principle” approval to NSE’s settlement application. To clear the hurdles, NSE had to pay Rs 1,388 crore to Sebi.
Setting up a coal exchange
One of the significant moves of the NSE board was to approve the setting up of a coal exchange which will be undertaken by a wholly-owned subsidiary. It will be known either as National Coal Exchange, Bharat Coal Exchange or India Coal Exchange, pending the final selection. The NSE board has agreed to infuse capital of Rs 100 crore in the proposed subsidiary.
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