The government on Monday increased the new fund offer (NFO) size of Bharat-22 ETF by over 81% to raise `14,500 crore as it decided to accept most of the over-subscriptions from the retail and retirement funds. The basic offer size of the first tranche of the broad-based ETF, comprising its stakes in several blue-chip PSUs and private companies, was `8,000 crore with an option to retain some of the over-subscriptions. The NFO of the ETF, which closed on Friday, received bids of about `32,000 crore — a mutual fund record, department of investment and public asset management secretary Neeraj Kumar Gupta said. “To satisfy retail investors and retirement funds, the government has decided to increase the NFO size to `14,500 crore,” Gupta said. The portion reserved for retail investors was subscribed 1.45 times; retirement funds by 1.5 times and 7 times by non-institutional investors and qualified institutional bidders. Anchor investors, for whom the share sale opened for subscription on November 14, subscribed 6.1 times of their portion amounting to `12,103 crore. “During the three days reserved for non-anchor investors, we witnessed an overwhelming response from all investors, particularly retail segment. In due course, the ETF will be listed,” ICICI Prudential AMC MD and CEO Nimesh Shah said.
ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund is the manager of the Bharat-22 ETF. LIC, Bank of India, SBI Pension Fund, EPFO and HDFC Ergo Insurance are among those who have put in bids. The government has set an ambitious target of raising `72,500 crore for disinvestment in the current fiscal. Of this, `46,500 crore is to be raised through minority stake sale in PSU and `15,000 crore from strategic sale. Another `11,000 crore is to come from listing of insurance companies. The state-owned companies or PSUs that are part of the new Bharat-22 ETF include ONGC, IOC, SBI, BPCL, Coal India and Nalco. The other CPSEs on the list are Bharat Electronics, Engineers India, NBCC, NTPC, NHPC, SJVNL, GAIL, PGCIL and NLC India. Only SBI, Indian Bank and BoB — figure in the Bharat-22 index. The mega ETF includes as many as six sectors ranging from finance and utilities to FMCG. In the index, L&T has the highest weightage, followed by ITC and SBI.
