IRFC garners ₹1,390 crore from 31 anchor investors

The country’s first IPO in calendar 2021 got off to a fine start with the anchor book portion of Indian Railway Finance Corporation’s (IRFC) initial public offering (IPO) getting comfortably subscribed, helping it raise ₹1,389.86 crore, out of the targeted total IPO mop up of about ₹4,633 crore.

As many as 31 marquee institutional investors – both domestic and foreign – lapped up the 53.46 crore shares that were on offer under the anchor book portion, a IRFC filing with the stock exchanges showed. These shares were allocated at ₹26, which is the upper end of the ₹25-26 price band fixed for the IPO.

The public issue, which is the largest so far by a Railway PSU, will open on Monday and has many firsts including the first occasion where a government owned NBFC has provided an anchor book ahead of its IPO. The IPO offers 178.2 crore shares of ₹ 10 each of IRFC including 59.4 crore shares through offer for sale ( proceeds going to government).

Government of Singapore is one of the major investors in the anchor book and has been allocated 9.05 crore shares (16.93 per cent of anchor portion) for ₹235.36 crore. Monetary Authority of Singapore has been allocated 2.21 crore shares for ₹ 57.62 crore. The other foreign funds that have got allocation include Goldman Sachs (Singapore) for ₹29.98 crore; Kuwait Investment Authority Fund for ₹39.98 crore and BNP Paribas Arbitrage Fund-ODI for ₹44.97 crore.

The domestic funds that have got allocations include HDFC Equity Fund (largest investor in the anchor book) at ₹268.51 crore; several funds of Nippon Life India and ITPL-Invesco Funds; besides Tata AIG General Insurance and Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance.