The insurance arms of ICICI Bank — ICICI Prudential Life Insurance and ICICI Lombard — HDFC Life Insurance and Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance, which had picked up 5% each in CSB Bank three years ago, have exited the company during the initial public offering at more than 60% gain.
The old generation private sector lender — earlier known as Catholic Syrian Bank — made its stock market debut on Wednesday, closing at about 54% over the issue price, on the BSE.
The insurers picked up stake in the bank about three years ago at ₹120 per share. They have now exited at ₹195 apiece, which is a gain of 62.5%. During the comparable period, Sensex gave a return of 56% while Bank Nifty’s return was 75%.
CSB shares debuted at ₹275 on the BSE or 41% higher than the issue price. During the day, it rose 57.43% to ₹307 and later closed at ₹300.10, a sharp gain of 53.90% over the issue price.
CSB’s IPO, which was to raise ₹410 crore, was oversubscribed 87 times.
A total of 40.27 lakh shares of the company were traded on the BSE during the day. The company’s market capitalisation stood at ₹5,205.41 crore.
The IPO was primarily to meet regulatory requirements since the bank was well capitalised. CSB reported a profit of ₹44 crore for the half year ended September 2019 compared with a loss of ₹197 crore loss for the full financial year 2018-19.
The bank has put its house in order in the last few years after Indo-Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa’s Fairfax India picked up majority stake in the lender.
