MC Exclusive: Tata Capital may see a delay in IPO

Tata Capital is required to list by September 2025 under RBI regulations.

Tata Capital may miss the September 2025 deadline to list its shares on stock exchanges.

The company has sought one more year from the banking regulator to go public, citing the ongoing merger of Tata Motor Finance with the lender, people familiar with the development said, requesting anonymity. Tata Capital is required to list by September 2025 under RBI regulations. The regulator has yet to respond to the request made last month.

A Tata Capital spokesperson denied that the company approached RBI for an extension of listing timelines.  “The above news is inaccurate. Tata Capital has not approached RBI for seeking any extension of the listing timelines. We are well poised to comply with all the regulatory requirements within the stipulated timelines,” the person said.
An email sent to an RBI spokesperson seeking comments remained unanswered.

In July, the boards of Tata Motors, Tata Capital and Tata Motors Finance approved a merger of Tata Motors Finance with Tata Capital through an NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal) scheme of arrangement.

“The scheme of arrangement will be subject to the approval of SEBI, RBI, NCLT among others and all shareholders and creditors of TCL and TMFL and will take approximately 9-12 months to complete,” Tata Motors said in a press release announcing the merger.

Tata Capital will start the IPO process after the merger concludes, a banker, one of the people cited above, said. “It may not be possible to file the papers with the merger ongoing, and hence, it is seeking more time for listing Tata Capital,” the person said. “Work pertaining to listing of Tata Capital seems to be put on cold storage for now”.

The people cited above said the probability of Tata Capital getting an extension for the listing timeline is quite high, given that the merger of Tata Motor Finance with Tata Capital is said to have been triggered at the regulator’s insistence. “Lately, the central bank has not been very comfortable with NBFCs of the same group targeting the same business.

Therefore, it was decided that Tata Motor Finance would be merged with Tata Capital. After the merger, Tata Capital will be the primary entity catering to vehicle financing,” said a highly placed source who was aware of the matter.

Rated as one of the largest diversified NBFCs, Tata Capital closed FY24 with a loan book Rs 1.58 lakh crore and net profit of Rs 3,327 crore. In October 2022, when the RBI introduced scale-based regulations for NBFCs, Tata Capital was classified in the upper layer as NBFC-UL. For such non-banks, listing is a mandatory requirement within three years of falling under the classification.