After having sought a dispensation from market regulator Sebi, state-run mining major Coal India (CIL) said today it had received the clearance for offering shares to employees of its subsidiary companies.
While CIL has an employee strength of 5,000, its eight subsidiaries have a combined workforce of about 400,000. “The first hurdle in the disinvestment of CIL has been cleared. Sebi has approved allotment of shares to employees of subsidiary companies,” CIL Chairman Partha S Bhattacharyya said.
However, he did not give details of the mechanism through which the share would be issued. Earlier, Bhattacharyya had said that about one per cent of the company’s equity would be given to its employees through a combination of employee stock options and employees’ stock purchase schemes.
Last month, after a meeting for representatives from the CIL, the coal ministry and the Department of Disinvestment, it was decided that the mining firm would go in for its initial public offering (IPO) by August 10 and that the draft red herring prospectus would be filed by the end of June.
