By IANS
New Delhi : June was a record month for Indian companies in terms of raising money from public issues, with mobilisation of a whopping Rs.225 billion ($5.5 billion), says a study by a leading equities research firm.
"Within June, the week of June 14-22 will be remembered for a long time. For, in this period alone, nearly 85 percent of the month's amount was mobilized," says the study by Prime, a database on primary capital markets, released Tuesday.
The week had the closing dates of the public offers by realty major DLF and the largest private sector lender ICICI Bank that together mobilised Rs.192 billion or $4.7 billion, says the study.
Notably, with just a quarter gone, the current fiscal has already seen India Inc raise Rs.236.79 billion, which is slightly more than Rs.236.75 billion raised in 2005-06 and within the reach of a record Rs.249.93 billion in 2006-07.
"With a very strong pipeline in place, the current year will easily overtake the preceding fiscal by a significant margin," says Prithvi Haldea, the founder of Praxis Consulting, which runs Prime.
"There are already as many as 68 issues which have either obtained SEBI approval or filed for approvals to collectively raise a huge Rs.144 billion and there are scores of other issues that are getting ready in the coming months," he says.
"This kind of mobilisation clearly establishes the arrival of India in the big league."
The study says while several analysts showed some concern about the depth of the market, what they overlooked was that the appetite was practically infinite for good issues within India, even though global liquidity was available for them.
"It is time we buried forever the concerns about liquidity and depth."
The study suggests that the time had come to reform the archaic process of initial public offers, having lived long with the manual system of filing application and processing.
Again, subscribing to public issues on the last day is becoming a nightmare and because of the cut-off time set up by stock exchanges, a large number of applications get rejected.