Bajaj Housing Finance IPO Drawing $39 Billion Of Bids Shows Insatiable Appetite

(Bloomberg) -- An initial public offering by the home-loan unit of India's largest shadow lender was oversubscribed by more than 60 times, highlighting continued investor exuberance over listings in the nation.

Bajaj Housing Finance Ltd., which sought to raise Rs 6,560 crore ($781 million) in the nation's biggest public offering of 2024, attracted bids for about $39 billion on the last day of the sale on Wednesday. That's more than 1% of the country's gross domestic product for the fiscal year ended 2024. 

Institutional investors drove the demand, with bids exceeding 200 times the shares set aside for them. The retail category was over-subscribed by seven times. The response was similar to that seen for Tata Technologies Ltd.'s IPO last year.

India has been bustling with debuts, with $7.75 billion raised in listings so far this year. That exceeds the proceeds in each of the past two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Investors have been chasing the first-day gain, which has averaged about 30% this year. 

Bigger sales are on the horizon — Hyundai Motor Co. will likely raise as much as $3.5 billion from the listing of its Indian unit in the coming months, Bloomberg News reported in July.

Bajaj Housing company aims to raise as much as Rs 3,560 billion rupees via new shares, while founder Bajaj Finance offered up to Rs 3,000 crore of shares in the sale. On Sept. 6, anchor investors, including Government of Singapore, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan India subscribed to 251.14 million shares worth Rs 1,760 crore at Rs 70 each.

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