ICICI Lombard IPO to open for subscription from Sept 15

Price band to be declared five days before the offer goes live

ICICI Bank, the holding company of ICICI Lombard General Insurance, has announced that its general insurance arm will be open for subscription via an initial public offering (IPO) on September 15. The subscription for IPO is slated to close on September 19.

The price band of the offer as decided by ICICI Lombard and the selling stakeholders, in consultation with the lead managers, is expected to be announced five days before the IPO opens for subscription, said the bank in a BSE filing.

In its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) submitted to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the insurer said it would offer 86,247,187 equity shares at a face value of Rs 10 per share, representing around 19 per cent of its equity share capital.

ICICI Bank, the majority shareholder of ICICI Lombard,  will dilute 31,761, 478 of its equity share, while FAL Corp– a unit of Fairfax Financial Holdings– will dilute up to 54,485,709 equity shares.

Around 4,312,359 equity shares, or 5 per cent of the total sale offer, will be reserved for the shareholders of ICICI Bank.

Earlier, Fairfax Financial Holdings had sold around 12.18 per cent of its stake in ICICI Lombard to private equity firms Warburg Pincus (nine per cent), Clermont Group (1.59 per cent) and IIFL Special Opportunities Fund (1.59 per cent). After the sale, ICICI Bank held around 63 per cent stake in ICICI Lombard, while Fairfax’s holding came down to 22 per cent. 

This is the second insurance company of the ICICI group that has opted to offer shares to the public. ICICI Prudential Life insurance, a subsidiary company of ICICI bank, got listed last year. It sold 12.63 per cent stake via an IPO and was valued at Rs 48,000 crore.