RPL fixes its issue price at Rs 60 per share

Mumbai, Apr 24 (UNI) The initial public offer (IPO) of Reliance Petroleum (RPL) has been priced at Rs 60 per share today.

Recently, RPL offered the US energy major Chevron to pick up five per cent of the RPL equity at the same price of Rs 60 per share, amounting to a total of Rs 1,300 crore.

The allotment of the shares to the successful bidders/investors to the issue would be done before May 5 as the listing of the shares would take place before May 10, merchant bank sources said.

The IPO which was offered through book building proces at a price band of Rs 57-62 per share, had broken all records as the issue was subscribed 51.47 times of the shares offered in the IPO and received applications worth around Rs 1,43,500 crore, almost double the previous highest collection of Rs 72,737 crore ONGC received in its issue in 2004.

The qualified institutional buyer (QIB) portion of the issue received 68.2 times subscription, the high net worth individuals' (HNI) portion 60 times and the retail individual investors' portion 15.2 times. The issue has got 2.13 million retail applications.

So far NTPC had received the highest number of retail applications at 1.4 million followed by TCS at 1.18 million.

The company sold shares through nine investment banks, including Citigroup and the local joint ventures of Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.

RPL, subsidiary of Reliance Industries, was set up to build a refinery and polypropylene plant in the special economic zone of Jamnagar.

The issue is a part of fund raising programme of the company to finance Rs 27,000 crore green-field refinery project with an annual capacity of 29 million tonnes of fuels in equity collaboration with energy giant Chevron Corporation of USA.

RIL has come up with IPO almost after 29 years as the last IPO of Reliance group had hit the market way back in 1977. The RPL issue had hit the market on April 13 and closed on April 20.

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