Infosys to offer 30mn shares via ADS

Infosys Technologies on Wednesday announced that it will go in for a sponsored secondary American Depository Share (ADS) offering.

The company declined to state a time frame for the issue, which will offer 30 million shares.

Based on the last closing price ($49) of Infosys on Nasdaq, the offering would be valued at $1.5 billion. This is expected to be the biggest overseas float by an Indian company.

This is the third time Infosys is going in for a sponsored ADS after its first issue in 2003 which was for $300 million followed by the $1 billion offer in 2005.

With this issue, the overseas float of Infosys will increase by 5% pushing the total float to 19% from the current 14% made up of 77.7 million shares.

The board of Infosys has also decided that as part of this offering, ADSs will be placed with Japanese investors through a Public Offer without Listing (POWL).

This means that Indian shareholders of Infosys will be able to tender 30 million shares, which will, in turn, be available for floatation in the US and Japanese markets. The price will be determined by the underwriters of the issue.

Nandan Nilekani, CEO & MD of Infosys, said: "Our goal is to get into one of the major global indices and this is part of that effort.''

An EGM would be held on November 7, 2006 to seek approval for the offering.

All equity shareholders will be eligible to offer their equity shares in the offering on a pari-passu basis. The company will not be issuing any new shares through the offering. The proceeds of the offering, after meeting issue expenses, will be paid to the selling shareholders.