The government is unlikely to come up with the IPO of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) in the current financial year ending March 2022, as the valuation of the state-owned behemoth is taking more than anticipated time, and the preparatory work is still far from complete.
There are still some issues that need to be addressed concerning the valuation of LIC, a senior official of one of the merchant bankers said.
Even after the valuation, several regulatory processes have concluded, the official said.
However, selloff secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey later in a tweet expressed confidence that IPO plans of LIC are on course and it would happen in the January-March quarter of 2021-22.
“It is reiterated that the plan is on course for the IPO in the last quarter of this fiscal,” Pandey tweeted.
The merchant banker added that the IPO requires vetting not only by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) but also the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) that has been headless for almost seven months.
Valuation of LIC is a complex process because of its size, product mix, real estate assets, subsidiaries, and profitability sharing structure, and the size of share sale depends on the valuation, another official said.
Given the number of regulatory procedures to be fulfilled, the official said it would be difficult to meet the deadline of the fourth quarter of the current fiscal.