BSE awaiting Sebi nod for stake sale

India's premier bourse Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) is awaiting market regulator Sebi's nod for offloading 51% stake, in which the likes of NASDAQ and NYSE have shown interest.

BSE will be offloading 26% stake to a strategic partner and the remaining in retail market through an IPO.

Kotak Mahindra, the financial advisor for the demutualisation process, has selected eight leading global bourses for the stake sale.

"We are in the process of selecting our strategic partners. We will be completing this procedure by May 2007," Rajanikant Patel, CEO & MD of BSE, said here today.

Sebi is expected to prescribe criteria for selection of strategic partner and will be announcing these norms soon as the process has to be completed within a span of nine months.

"There exists automatic approval from the Reserve Bank for a foreign partner interested in 26% stake in an Indian financial institution," he added.

Robert Greifeld, president & CEO of NASDAQ, during his August 1 visit to the city had said he is in favour of global consolidation of exchanges and had also held a meeting with BSE officials to possibly discuss picking stake in the exchange.

NASDAQ had made a 2.4 billion pound bid for London Stock Exchange (LSE). However, the bid was rejected by LSE, after which NASDAQ hiked its stake to 25.3%, buying LSE's largest shareholder.