Companies from the United States, Europe and Australia are among 15 firms in the race to acquire a stake in India's No 3 asset management firm, UTI, ahead of an initial public offer (IPO), its chairman said on October 23.
UTI Asset Management Co, with a corpus of 450 billion rupees ($11.4 billion) at the end of September, aims to sell 20 percent of the firm before the IPO, the first by an Indian asset manager.
"We are going to issue 10 million additional shares through private placement," Chairman UK Sinha told Reuters in an interview.
He said companies from the United States, Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East had approached the fund house for the pre-IPO placement.
No company will be offered more than 5 percent, he said.
Sinha said UTI would appoint bankers for the IPO in the first week of November, but did not say how much he expected to raise.
"We had presentations from 12 investment bankers, the best in the world," he said. "They have been talking of an amount where the multiples of the exiting investors would be very, very high."
He did not elaborate, but said the private placement and the IPO would be done in quick succession.
State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Punjab National Bank and Life Insurance Corporation of India - all government-run - hold 25 percent each of UTI's 50 million shares.
After the IPO, in which 19.4 million shares would be sold by existing shareholders, their combined stake would fall to 51 percent.
India's rapidly growing 4.8-trillion-rupee domestic fund industry - led by Reliance Capital and ICICI Prudential - has attracted many global firms, with a booming economy boosting incomes and appetite for investments.
This month, Pioneer Global Investments Ltd, the fund arm of Italy's biggest bank UniCredit, joined hands with Bank of Baroda to re-enter the Indian fund industry after nearly five years.
The investment arms of top insurer American International Group Inc and JP Morgan started their Indian fund businesses this year, while Morgan Stanley is planning to expand its India fund operations after a gap of 13 years.
Indian media has reported that Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, J.M. Financial and Enam Securities are in the race to manage the IPO.