Anil Agarwal announces plans to delist Vedanta from BSE, NSE

Billionaire Anil Agarwal's Vedanta Ltd wants to delist from Indian bourses. The businessman has proposed a share buyout of Rs 87.5 a piece to buy the remaining 49 per cent stake from minority investors. The proposed share price is 9.9 per cent premium over Monday's closing price, Vedanta's holding company Vedanta Resources Ltd said. This way, at the current share price, the mining magnate plans to offer around Rs 16,200 crore in cash to take Vedanta Ltd private.

The company has said it'll delist equity shares from the BSE Limited and National Stock Exchange of India, and if such delisting would be successful, it'll also seek to delist America Depositary Shares from the New York Stock Exchange and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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VRL, along with the other members of the Promoter Group, holds 1,76,43,26,080 equity shares, accounting for 51.06 per cent of the paid-up equity shares of the company, excluding American Depository Shares. Public shareholders hold 169,10,90,351 equity shares aggregating to 48.94% of the paid-up equity share capital as on May 12, excluding ADS but including Employee Trust shares.

The company said Vedanta Group has been pursuing a process of corporate simplification for several years, including the merger of Sterlite with Sesa Goa to form Sesa-Sterlite (subsequently renamed Vedanta Limited) in 2012; the merger of Cairn India with Vedanta Limited in 2016, and the delisting of Vedanta Resources Pie (subsequently renamed Vedanta Resources Ltd) in 2018.

The company said the delisting of Vedanta was the next logical step in this simplification process and will provide the Group with enhanced operational and financial flexibility in a capital intensive business. "Due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, we have accelerated the simplification strategy in this challenging environment to ensure support for meaningful deleveraging and to enable us to continue to invest in the growth of the business," said Vedanta Group Chairman Anil Agarwal said in a statement.

Agarwal added the delisting plan would improve Vedanta Resources' credit profile, while giving push to its the group's debt reduction plan. Following the announcement, Vedanta shares opened 9.7% higher at the intraday high of Rs 98.2 on BSE. On the National Stock Exchange, Vedanta share price was trading at Rs 89, after touching a high of Rs 97.95 earlier today.

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