Bharti Airtel’s promoter firm Bharti Telecom raised Rs 8,433 crore on Tuesday, selling 2.75% stake in the telecom major to institutional investors through an accelerated book building process in the secondary market. With this the Sunil Bharti Mittal led-Bharti Airtel’s promoters are ostensibly looking to go ‘debt free’, a path similar to the one chosen by Reliance Industries’ Mukesh Ambani. Bharti Airtel share price traded flat on the BSE on Wednesday. After the sale, the promoter group will continue to own 56.23% in the company.
Bharti Airtel said the sale was oversubscribed multiple times by a healthy mix of all categories of investors, long-only and hedge fund investors across geographies in India, Asia, Europe and the United States of America (US). According to data available on the BSE, Societe Generale picked up 3.53 crore shares at Rs 561.10 per share. “The stake sale was anchored by several existing and new shareholders and several marquee Global Mutual Fund complexes, Sovereign Wealth Funds, Multi-strategy funds and Domestic institutional investors in sizable quantities,” Bharti Airtel said in a statement.
