Infosys ADS offer put at 1.6 billion Dollars

Bangalore, Nov 21 (UNI) In the largest ever offering to foreign investors from India, shareholders of Software major Infosys Technologies have successfully completed a sponsored secondary offering of 30 million American Depository Shares (ADS) at a price of US dollar 53.50 per share to aggregate US Dollar 1.6 billion.

As part of the offer, five million ADSs representing five million shares would be placed with Japanese investors through a Public Offer Without Listing (POWL).

Infosys President and Chief Operating Officer Kris Gopalakrishnan told UNI that the offering amounting to 12 per cent of the holding in India would improve the float from NASDAQ to 19.35 per cent of the total shares, from the existing 13.96 per cent.

''This offering, we hope, will help us be part of the Nasdaq 100 index and considerably enhance the profile of the company outside the country," he said.

Infosys would not receive any proceeds from the offer and the net proceeds after the offering expenses would be distributed to the selling shareholders within 30 days of the closing of the offering.

As many as 3,477 valid offers for 84,032,322 equity shares was received when the offering closed on November 17. The maximum offer size of the Indian Invitation to Offer was 30,000,000 equity shares.

The unsold shares would be returned to the selling shareholders by December four.

The combined holdings of all the shareholders who offered their shares in the Indian Invitation to Offer were 246 million equity shares, he said.

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