RVNL share sale elicits good investor interest: DIPAM Secy

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The government’s offer for the sale of RVNL shares saw good investor interest, DIPAM Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said on Friday.

In the two-day Offer For Sale (OFS) which closed on Friday, the government sold 11.17 crore shares, representing a 5.36 per cent stake in Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL). The floor price was fixed at Rs 119 apiece and the offer included a greenshoe option of an additional 4.08 crore shares or 1.96 per cent stake.

"RVNL OFS closed with good interest from investors. With this, RVNL is now MPS compliant,” Pandey tweeted. MPS refers to Minimum Public Shareholding. On Thursday, institutional investors had put in bids worth over Rs 2,000 crore and the portion reserved for them was subscribed 2.73 times. Shares of RVNL declined 4.12 per cent to close at Rs 120.95 apiece on the BSE on Friday.

The government’s holding in RVNL will come down from 78.20 per cent to 72.84 per cent after the completion of share allotment to bidders. RVNL was incorporated in January 2003 as a fully-owned public sector unit of the Ministry of Railways. It has the mandate of raising extra-budgetary resources and implementing projects relating to the creation and augmentation of the capacity of rail infrastructure on a fast-track basis.

So far in the current fiscal, the government has raised Rs 4,235 crore through disinvestment, including Rs 4,185 crore from share sales in Coal India. The full-year budget target from disinvestment is Rs 51,000 crore.