Reinsurer GIC Targets India’s No. 3 IPO With $1.7 Billion Offer

(Bloomberg) -- General Insurance Corp., India's largest reinsurer, and its owner will seek as much as 113.7 billion rupees ($1.7 billion) after setting terms for the third-biggest initial public offering on record in the South Asian nation.

GIC will offer 17.2 million new shares at 855 rupees to 912 rupees apiece, according to advertisement published Wednesday in the Financial Express newspaper. Its only shareholder, the Indian government, will sell as many as 107.5 million shares in the IPO. The offering will open on Oct. 11 and close on Oct. 13.

Indian IPOs have already raised 389.3 billion rupees this year, surpassing the previous annual record set in 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The share sale from GIC will be the biggest since Coal India Ltd.'s 2010 offering and the third biggest ever in the country, the data show.

GIC will offer a discount of 45 rupees per share to staff and individual investors, according to Wednesday's advertisement. The reinsurer is following SBI Life Insurance Co., the insurance unit of India's largest bank, which raised 83.86 billion rupees in its IPO last month.

Citigroup Inc., Axis Bank Ltd., Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings Plc and Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. are the book running lead managers for the GIC sale.

To contact the reporter on this story: George Smith Alexander in Mumbai at galexander11@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Scent at bscent@bloomberg.net, Timothy Sifert