JOIN USSebi clears rights issues worth Rs 5,500 crore
Market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), has given its go-ahead to four rights issues, totalling about Rs 5,500 crore, proposed by TV 18 Broadcast, Network 18 Media & Investment, Bajaj Finserv and Bhushan Steel.
The rights issues of Network 18 and TV 18 would together raise funds worth about Rs 4,000 crore, while Bajaj Finserv and Bhushan Steel have offered to raise up to Rs 1,000 crore and Rs 474 crore, respectively.
In rights issue, shares are issued to existing investors as per their holding at predetermined price and ratio.
Out of these four issues, Bajaj Finserv had filed draft offer document with Sebi last month itself, while other three companies had submitted their documents to the regulator earlier this year.
Sebi received the draft offer document for Bhushan Steel rights issue, through lead manager ICICI Securities, on February 22 and issued its ‘observations’ on August 22. Issuance of ‘observations’ on offer documents by Sebi is considered a clearance to the issuer to go ahead with the share issues through routes like IPOs, FPOs and rights issue.
Further, Sebi received draft offer documents for Bajaj Finserv rights issue on July 18 and issued its observations on August 17. JM Financial is the lead manager for this issue.
The draft offer documents for TV 18 and Network 18 rights issues were received by Sebi on March 6 and the observations were issued for both of them on August 17.
ICICI Securities is the lead manager for the rights issues of both TV 18 and Network 18, which are part of same group.
Bajaj Finserv, in its draft offer, had proposed to raise up to Rs 1,000 crore through the rights issue.
The company further announced a rights issue of Rs 650 per share in a ratio of one equity share for every ten held by its shareholders, aggregating to Rs 941 crore. It has fixed September 8 as the record date for rights issue.
In case of Bhushan Steel, it announced in February to raise about Rs 474 crore through issue of over 1.41 crore shares on rights basis at a price of Rs 335 each, in the ratio of one equity share for every 15 held.
Network 18 and TV 18 had announced their rights issues, of up to Rs 2,700 crore each, way back in January.
However, Network 18 being promoter and majority shareholder of TV 18 would subscribe to about Rs 1,400 crore worth shares in the rights issue of TV 18 as well. As a result, the net aggregate from the two rights issues would result in fund raising of about Rs 4,000 crore.
These issues were announced alongside a multi-layered deal reached by the media group with Mukesh Ambani-led RIL group. Under the deal, RIL group is selling part of its stake in Eenadu TV channels and an independent media trust set up would provide funds to Network 18 group promoters in the form of ‘optionally convertible debentures’.