Hyundai IPO, India’s biggest share sale, is also its most expensive

Primary beneficiaries of Hyundai’s mega IPO were its investment bankers who collected Rs 493 crore in fee for managing India’s biggest share sale. Kotak Mahindra Capital, Citigroup, HSBC, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley were the merchant bankers to the issue.

Fees paid to the bankers accounted for 79 percent of the expenses Hyundai incurred on the share sale.

Expenses for regulatory filings and listing fees amounted to Rs 45 crore, advertising and marketing cost Rs 25 crore and auditors were paid Rs 13 crore.

Hyundai’s spending is way ahead of the money spent by companies that went public through big IPOs such as Paytm and Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), which was India’s biggest public offer before it being overtaken by the South Korean giant.

Paytm parent One97 Communications Limited, which raised Rs 18,300 crore in September 2021, spent Rs 411.5 crore on the IPO.

State-owned LIC spent only Rs 119.5 crore for its Rs 21,000 crore offer in May 2021. The low spending was the result of long-held tradition of investment banks charging low fees for managing government’s share offers.

LIC paid only Rs 11.8 crore to its bankers and Paytm Rs 323.9 crore.

Other companies that incurred big expenses for their IPOs include Zomato, which spent Rs 284 crore, Ola Electric Rs 251 crore and Nykaa Rs 242 crore.

At 2.22 pm, the stock was trading at Rs 1,835 on the NSE. Down 5.14 percent.