Morrison Cohen has advised the Government of India on its recent international offer and sale of $1.1 billion of shares from its majority shareholding in NMDC Limited, the Indian mining group. The transaction was executed as an “Offer For Sale”, a new category of regulated securities transaction in India, designed to help majority holders of Indian public companies reduce their shareholdings to no more than 75%, in order to comply with recent regulations intended to help modernize the Indian capital markets. The Offer for Sale and other Indian offering mechanisms are expected to be used extensively in the coming months as majority shareholders across the Indian economy begin to reduce the sizes of their shareholdings.
The NMDC Offer For Sale was the second Offer For Sale ever undertaken and the first to sell shares internationally. Morrison Cohen advised on the international aspects of the transaction. Following the sale, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was reported as saying that India will speed up the sale of its stakes in Indian companies to help revive the Indian capital markets.
Goldman Sachs, Citi, Merrill Lynch Bank of America, and Indian investment banks Axis Capital and ICICI Securities served as brokers to the transaction.
For more information on the NMDC Offer for Sale, please click here.
