CIL to move SEBI on 19 February to finalise stake sale plan

A roadmap of Coal India Limited's (CIL) public offer is likely to emerge after the state-run miner makes a presentation to market regulator SEBI and the department of disinvestment on 19 February.

CIL chairman and managing director Partha S Bhattacharyya said the company's internal target was to complete the IPO by the end of the calendar yea  and a clear picture would emerge after a meeting with officials of the Securities and Exchange Board of India on 19 February.

"The major agenda of the meeting will be to create a roadmap (for the IPO) and to sort out some ticklish issues," he said. He added that there were certain legal issues that needed to be dealt with, such as offering shares to employees of subsidiaries.

Bhattacharyya was speaking on the sidelines of the Third Northeast and East Power Summit 2010, organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce in Kolkata yesterday. He also said there were certain issues regarding the offer of shares to employees and persons whose land the company would acquire for mining.

He said the offer to employees would be resolved soon though the issue of the project-affected remained to be resolved. He expressed the hope that the outstanding issue would not disturb the IPO process. This would mean that land-losers might not be given any preferential allotment in the first round of IPO.
 
On CIL proposing reservation of only 1 per cent of the shares for its 4 lakh employees in seven subsidiaries, against the earlier 2 per cent proposal, he said, the government would offer 10 per cent to the public and any offer to employees or land-losers would be above that.
According to analysts, this provides strong hint that the proposed IPO would be of 11 per cent as against the earlier planned 15 per cent (10 per cent public, 2 per cent employees and 3 per cent land-losers).