CIL share sale: Govt keeps precise sequence and timing of the divestment programme a secret

MUMBAI: The government has managed to outfox Dalal Street traders and arbitrageurs in the recent Coal India share sale. In the last two years, share issues of listed PSUs have been an easy ground for the savvy market participants to make a quick buck.

In the bargain, the government ended up receiving much lesser money from these offerings.

This time, a smarter government, along with capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India, devised a strategy that took short-sellers and punters by surprise.

The finance ministry kept the precise sequence and timing of the divestment programme a secret. Also, the roadshows of all the companies that would be divested were clubbed, leaving the market guessing on the timing of each of them.

This is a departure from the older practice where the government conducted one roadshow at a time and followed it up with the offering. Usually, this gap was at least a couple of weeks, giving traders enough time to short the stock.

In Coal India’s offer for sale (OFS) last week, short-sellers got very little time to hammer the stock as the government launched the share sale in less than two days of announcing the issue. “We have to learn from our mistakes in the past. If you talk about one stock only, then the stock gets hammered. Once information gets leaked, then the stock price gets impacted. So, to contain that, suggestions were made to keep it confidential and it has worked well this time,” said a person close to the development.

Bankers said the launch of the Coal India OFS was so quick and swift that no one could react much. “The swiftness of launching the Coal India OFS took all the participants by surprise,” said V Jayasankar, senior executive director and head of equity capital markets at Kotak Investment Banking. “Arbitrageurs did not get time to short the stock.”

This financial year, for the first time, roadshows for four public offers -- Coal India, ONGC, Power Finance Corporation and Rural Electrification Corporation -- were conducted together by government officials. “A lot of investors were inquiring about the divestment programme and its sequence. The government has been talking to bankers on all the deals as a result, no one could guess which one was coming first,” Jayasankar said.