New Delhi: State Bank of India (SBI) and few other public sector lenders are expected to raise funds of over Rs 16,000 crore from the market to meet their capital requirement. "The government has taken a decision to allow public sector banks to raise capital from market through follow-on-public offer (FPO) or qualified institutional placement (QIP) by diluting Government of India shareholding up to 52 per cent in phased manner to meet their capital requirement," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in a reply to the Rajya Sabha.
The government has allowed SBI to raise Rs 15,000 crore and Oriental Bank of Commerce to mobilise Rs 1,000 crore from the market, he said. At the same time, Canara Bank intends to raise funds by offering four crore equity shares in market. At the current market price, the Bank would be able to raise about Rs 1,500 crore. Shares of Canara Bank on April 28 closed at 384.75 per unit, up 0.77 per cent on the BSE. Public sector banks could raise Rs 1.60 lakh crore by reducing government stake to 52 per cent.
Out of 27 PSBs, Government of India controls 22 through majority holding. In the remaining five banks, state-run SBI holds majority stake. In a separate reply, said Jaitley as many as 2,015 companies listed on the BSE and 263 on the NSE are yet to comply with market regulator SEBI's directive to appoint at least one woman director on the board. Of the 5,305 companies listed on BSE, 3,290 companies have complied with and 2,015 companies or 38 per cent have not complied with the norm as on April 16, he said.
Out of 1,624 companies listed on the NSE, 1,361 companies have complied, while 263 companies (or 16 per cent) have not complied with SEBI's women director norm, he said. The capital markets watchdog SEBI had issued guidelines in February 2014 asking companies to appoint at least one woman director on their boards by October 1, 2014, which was later relaxed to April 1, 2015.
