Canara Bank has invited bids to divest its entire stake in its housing finance arm nearly a year and half after it called off a similar move due to a lower-than-expected price quotation.
The state-run lender informed the exchanges today that it has sought expressions of interest from bidders and investors for its 30 percent stake—or nearly 4 crore shares—in Can Fin Homes Ltd.
That comes a week after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's proposed merger of the Bengaluru-headquartered bank with its Karnataka peer, Syndicate Bank, to form India's fourth-largest state-run lender.
The housing financier's key lenders, according to its annual report for FY19, include State Bank of India, Lakshmi Vilas Bank Ltd., The Federal Bank Ltd., HDFC Bank Ltd. and Corporation Bank apart from Canara Bank. It's targeting a loan book size of Rs 23,000 crore by March 2020.
Shares of Can Fin Homes have risen 9,600 percent since its listing in January 1991 while Canara Bank has gained around 300 percent since its listing in December 2002.
The housing financier has gained nearly 36 percent so far this year, while Canara Bank declined by about a third over the same period.
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