SBI raises Rs 15,000 cr from QIP

Mumbai, June 9 (IANS) India's largest bank State Bank of India (SBI) has successfully completed raising of Rs 15,000 crore from qualified institutional placement (QIP), a top bank official said on Friday.

Speaking to reporters,here, SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said the QIP evinced interest from a wide variety of investing institutions.

She said domestic/foreign institutions, sovereign wealth funds and others who never invested in public sector undertakings (PSU) and those who have never invested in India showed interest in the QIP issue with each share priced at Rs 287.25.

The SBI would issue a total of around 52.2 crore fresh equity shares.

The overall demand for QIP was for Rs 27,000 crore. The demand from domestic institutions, barring one large outfit, was Rs 8,500 crore and the overall demand from foreign institutions was over Rs 11,000 crore.

Post-issue, Life Insurance Corporation of India's (LIC) stake in the bank will be 10.4 per cent -- up from 8.6 per cent.

The central government's holding in the bank will be 57.07 per cent.

Bhattacharya said SBI would have met the regulatory capital requirement till FY19 without fundraising but would continue to look at divesting some non-core investments.

Bhattacharya said the bank will not hit the capital markets for the next two years while its life insurance subsidiary will be looking at an initial public offering this year.

Speaking about the stressed loans issued to the telecom sector, Bhattacharya said the bank has a policy in place for provisioning.

Post-QIP issue, the capital-to-risks assets ratio will be at 13.64 per cent and the common equity tier-1 at 10.20 per cent, the bank said.