LIC mulling to appoint Chief Financial Officer before its mega IPO planned in current fiscal

State-backed Life Insurance Corp of India (LIC) is seeking to appoint a chief financial officer, according to a notification on its website, ahead of an initial public offering slated before the end of the fiscal year.

The move to hire a CFO follows a decision to re-designate LIC’s top job to a chief executive officer from chairman earlier this year.

LIC is currently undergoing a valuation exercise for an IPO that could be India`s biggest ever as the government seeks to raise around 900 billion Indian rupees by selling a 5-10 per cent stake in the company by the end of the fiscal year runs through March.

Recently, the government appointed ten investment banks including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and SBI Capital Market to handle the offering.

Earlier this year, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her budget speech had announced that the cash-rich LIC is likely to go public and an initial public offer will be launched in this financial year.

In the biggest IPO in the history of India, LIC IPO will also see a 10 per cent stake reserved for policyholders. In this direction, LIC has already started creating a database of eligible policyholders.

This has been initiated keeping in mind that the LIC has 29 crore policyholders and many people hold more than one policy and the process is expected to consume time.

The listing of LIC will be crucial for the government to meet its disinvestment target. The Budget estimate for disinvestment in 2021-22 has been set at Rs 1.75 lakh crore. So far this fiscal, Rs 7,645.70 crore has been realised as disinvestment receipts.   

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Budget speech had said that strategic disinvestment of BPCL, Air India, Shipping Corporation of India, Container Corporation of India, IDBI Bank, BEML, Pawan Hans, Neelachal Ispat Nigam Ltd, among others.

(With inputs from Reuters)