Rabobank, the largest retail bank in the Netherlands, today sold a majority of its stake in private lender YES Bank for about Rs 453 crore.
Rabobank has been gradually paring its stake in YES Bank since June 2010, as the Dutch lender moves closer to setting up its own banking unit in India.
Rabobank, which owned 16.7 million shares or 4.73 per cent stake in YES Bank as on end-March, sold 12.7 million shares in bulk deals on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). After the sell, the Dutch lender’s stake in YES Bank has now come down to 1.14 per cent.
The shares were sold at about Rs 357 apiece, a discount of about 2.5 per cent from YES Bank’s closing price yesterday. Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance purchased 2.52 million shares from Rabobank, while Citigroup Global Markets Mauritius acquired 2.2 million shares, BSE data showed.
YES Bank shares fell 2.54 per cent, or Rs 9.3, to Rs 357.1 on the BSE on Thursday.
Rabobank, which initially owned nearly 16 per cent of YES Bank, sold a 11 per cent stake for about $213 million (Rs 1,118 crore) in June 2010.
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Rabobank, which has a wholly-owned non-banking finance unit in India, plans to focus on agriculture, food, renewable energy and clean technology sectors as part of its banking foray.
The Dutch lender said in April last year it had received approval from the Reserve Bank of India to open its first branch in Asia’s third-largest economy, which will be located in the country’s financial capital of Mumbai.
The YES Bank stake sale comes after a slew of such deals in the Indian market since the beginning of 2012, as investors took advantage of the stock market gains to reduce their holdings or exit from their India portfolio companies.
The Indian market is up more than 11 per cent this year after having dropped nearly 25 per cent in 2011.
Malaysia’s state investment arm, Khazanah Nasional, sold about 4.2 per cent holding in YES Bank for about $105 million in market block deals last month. Other investors such as the Carlyle Group, Warburg Pincus and Temasek Holdings have also cut stakes in Indian financial services companies in the last couple of months.
Indian companies raised $6 billion ( Rs 31,500 crore) through equity deals in the first quarter of this year, more than double the amount raised in the same period last year, Thomson Reuters data showed.