Foreign holding in RCom touches 23% after Rs4,800 cr QIP
03 Jul 2014
Promoter shareholding in Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom) has dropped to 60 per cent from 67 per cent while foreign holding has increased to 23 per cent after the Rs4,800-crore share allotment to qualified institutional institutions.
US and European institutional investors bought a majority of shares in the over Rs4,800-crore QIP offering by telecom operator Reliance Communications.
In a regulatory filing, RCom said its committee of the board of directors at a meeting held on Thursday issued and allotted 33,82,86,197 equity shares to the eligible qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) at a price of Rs142.14 per equity share for a total of Rs4,808.40 crore.
Further, the company has informed that after the allotment, the paid-up equity share capital of the company stands increased to about Rs1,201 crore comprising 2,40,23,13,078 equity shares of Rs5 each.
"About 84 per cent of QIP was picked up by sovereign funds and pension funds from the US and Europe. A large chunk was also picked up by Indian mutual funds,'' PTI quoted a source as saying.
The RCom QIP - the biggest by a private firm in India - is larger than the previous institutional fund raising by Axis Bank (about Rs4,700 crore), Adani (Rs4,000 crore) and GMR (Rs3,966 crore).
The fund raising will help the company reduce its debt that has doubled to Rs 40,177.6 crore in four years. Proceeds of QIP will be used to repay high cost rupee debt. Interest cost savings will be over Rs800 crore per year, sources said.
Shares of RCom closed at Rs144.9 on Thursday, down 0.65 per cent, compared to their previous close on the BSE.
