Bandhan Bank's promoter will sell Rs 10,500 crore worth of equity stake in the private sector lender through a block deal on Monday. The block deal involves selling 33.74 crore shares in the lender at a floor price of Rs 311 per share, as per the terms sheet. The floor price is about 10 per cent lower than Bandhan Bank's Friday closing price of Rs 345.25.
The bank's main shareholder Bandhan Financial Holdings Limited (BFHL or NOFHC), which currently owns 60.95 per cent shares in the lender, is expected to offload about 20.95 per cent stake in Bandhan Bank.
The move is a part of the bank's effort to bring down promoter shareholding in the lender to meet the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regulatory norms. As per the RBI's new banking licensing norms, banks have to bring down the promoter holding to 40 per cent within three years from the date of commencement of business.
The Kolkata-based private sector lender started operations as a universal bank on August 22, 2018. Bandhan Bank, which transformed itself from a micro-finance lender to a universal bank, has two types of banking outlets -- bank branches catering to general banking customers and Banking Units (BU) that cater to micro banking customers.
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Bandhan Bank, in its annual report for FY20, had said that it was exploring options to further bring down promoter's stake in the bank to the prescribed 40 per cent limit of the paid-up equity capital.
JP Morgan, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs are running the formal process to complete the transaction.
In January 2019, Bandhan Bank had acquired HDFC-owned Gruh Finance in a stock-swap deal, which brought down promoters' holding in the lender to 61 per cent from 82.28 per cent.
The RBI had imposed monetary fine of Rs 1 crore on Bandhan Bank last October as it had failed to bring down the holding company's stake to the prescribed level by the said time frame.
By Chitranjan Kumar