Actis, FTIL and IFCI plan to sell NSE shares

As leading bourse NSE's long-awaited IPO continues to elude the markets, private equity major Actis has become its latest investor to press the exit button and plans to offload its entire holding soon.
Among other investors of the National Stock Exchange (NSE), public sector entities IFCI and IDBI Bank are also looking to further dilute their holdings.
Besides, crisis-hit Financial Technologies India Ltd (FTIL) has floated an expression of interest for sale of its shareholding in NSE to comply with a Sebi order.
Actis and other private equity investors have been pressing for an IPO by NSE for a long time to give them an opportunity to monetise their holdings in part or full, but the public offer continues to get delayed amid lack of regulatory clarity on the matter.

Actis, which had picked up one per cent stake in NSE in 2007, plans to offload its entire holding, sources said.
When contacted, an Actis spokesperson said: "We do not comment on market speculation."

In reply to a query in this regard, an NSE spokesperson said any stake sale decision is entirely of the respective shareholder and the exchange has no role to play in the matter.
Major NSE investors include LIC, SBI, IFCI, StockHolding Corp, IDBI Bank, General Atlantic, SAIF Partners, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Temasek and Tiger Global.
Meanwhile, FTIL has floated an expression of interest (EoI) from entities interested in acquiring its holding of 10,000 shares of NSE, for which it has fixed the minimum bid price of Rs 3,900 each.

The move comes following markets regulator Sebi order that directed FTIL to divest its shareholding in several entities, including NSE. FTIL has also invited bids for its stake in MCX-SX Clearing Corporation.
Besides, IDBI Bank intends to exit NSE by selling its five per cent stake by the end of the current fiscal.
Infrastructure lender IFCI last month offloaded part of its stake in NSE for Rs 263 crore and plans to sell more soon.
It has been over three years since Sebi notified new rules permitting listing of stock exchanges.
As per Sebi norms, exchanges can get listed provided they put in place appropriate mechanisms for tackling conflicts of interest. However, the exchanges are not allowed to list on their own platforms. Still, there remain some regulatory gaps that are coming in way of their listings.

The government has also acknowledged that there are some regulatory issues in listing of stock exchanges and is looking to resolve them.
"The issue of listing of stock exchanges is under consideration... There are some regulatory issues in the listing of stock exchanges," Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha had said in July.