After 2 attempts, govt fails to divest IDBI Bank

NEW DELHI: Ten years later and after two attempts, govt has failed to privatise IDBI Bank, the perpetual problem child, leaving potential bidders fatigued and raising questions over the process as well as future disinvestment plans.

It wasn't the first time that the Centre tried to exit IDBI Bank, with the plan first announced by former finance minister Arun Jaitly in 2016 scuttled by civil servants and bank executives, who cited possible controversy over real estate assets, including some apartments in South Mumbai and other parts.

Five years later, the Modi govt again cleared the plan and IDBI Bank was the only privatisation plan, which kept moving, while others kept failing as departments kept blocking them.

When the process started, the bank's shares were trading at Rs 31 and had four players in the fray - Oaktree Capital, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Emirates NBD and Fairfax. Over the next four years they continued with due diligence as the process went through multiple twists and turns. Oaktree was the first to drop out.

The bank clearly offered a good opportunity to overseas players to enter the rapidly growing Indian market, and were willing to accept indemnities for past litigations, including a potential $1 billion outstanding tax claims. Some of them were also willing to overlook other challenges such as reservation policies and restrictions reworking staff-related policies for two years. There were also going to be challenges related to employee culture.

Those familiar with the sale process said that bidders and transaction advisors estimated the book value of shares at around Rs 55-60, against the reported book value of Rs 67, prompting Kotak Mahindra to back out.

The reserve price was fixed at over Rs 94 a share - a 41% premium to book value.

Regarding the bids by Fairfax and Emirates NBD, which were rejected, one was said to be at 10% discount to the current book value, while the other was at a 10-12% premium.

What complicated the matter for the committee of secretaries, which took a call on rejecting the bids, was the market price of IDBI shares, which soared 59% from under Rs 73 a year ago to over Rs 116 on Feb 27. With a 5.3% public float, it did not take significant volumes to be traded for the share to move up or down and market players raised the price in anticipation of the sale.

Not surprisingly, since last Friday the bank's shares have fallen nearly 19% to less than Rs 75, the closing price on BSE on Wednesday.

Bankers are more worried about the impact that the IDBI Bank transaction will have on other disinvestment deals as companies typically do not invest five years on a transaction and would instead go for a smaller private player and ramp up the operations in this period.

"It's a missed opportunity, not just for govt, but also LIC, which was brought in to warehouse the shares and is now stuck with it for a few more years," said a banker.

Besides, barring Air India, the Narendra Modi govt has not moved on strategic sales, despite its stated policy of getting out of public sector undertajings in non-strategic sectors.

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