Gautam Thapar promoted BILT, the country’s largest producer of writing and printing paper, today announced its plans to raise $330 million from London Stock Exchange, through a book building process and making offer to select institutional investors. The company will invest $170 billion on capex while $140 million will be used to reduce debt burden.
With this issue, BILT wishes to enter the FTSE UK index series, and it is anticipated that the company will enter the FTSE 250 and FTSE All-Share Indices as well. The most coveted index on LSE, the FTSE 100 already has two large Indian promoters based groups — commodity major Vedanta promoted by Anil Agarwal and the Ruia family controlled Essar Energy.
In a statement issue on BSE, BILT said that following a pre-Admission reorganisation, the company’s share capital will be owned by Ballarpur Industries Ltd (79.5 per cent), through its wholly-owned subsidiary Ballarpur International Holdings BV, and two private equity investors, Lathe Investment Pte Ltd (12.9 per cent), a wholly owned subsidiary of Government of Singapore Investment Corporation Pte Ltd, and JPMorgan Mauritius (7.6 per cent).
The book running dates, issue date and listing dates have not be disclosed yet, though company said that it hopes to hit the market around Easter, in other words mid-April. The offer price will also be revealed in the coming weeks. .
IPOs from LSE usually follow a month long process before the prices are finalised. Typical issue process involved making an initial announcement as done today, followed by two weeks of discussions with prospective buyers and around 10-day long road shows at the end of which price of the issue will be announced.