India Seeks to Sell 5% Stake in Top Insurer’s Mega IPO
- Government will offer about 316 million shares, no new stock
- Must raise $8 billion from asset sales to meet budget targets
A building of LIC (Life Insurance Corporation) in Kolkata, India.
Photographer: Indranil Aditya/NurPhoto/Getty Images
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government plans to sell a 5% stake in the initial public offering of state-run Life Insurance Corporation of India, in what’s set to be the country’s largest sale.
The administration will sell about 316 million shares in the wholly owned insurer, according to a draft prospectus filed with the market regulator Sunday. LIC’s so-called embedded value, a key metric for insurers that combines the current value of future profits with the net value of assets, is pegged at 5.4 trillion rupees ($72 billion).