SBI appoints 9 merchant bankers for Rs 15,000 cr share sale

Country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday kicked of its largest-ever fund raising drive to raise up to Rs 15,000 crore by picking up as many as nine investment bankers, including Goldman Sachs, Barclays Plc and Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA-ML), sources said.

The other merchant bankers appointed for the share sale are Citi, SBI Caps, Axis Bank, JM Financial, ICICI Securities and Kotak Mahindra Bank, sources added.

Late January, the nation's largest lender had announced to raise Rs 15,000 crore through a public offer, which will include rights issue to fund business and meet global capital adequacy norms.

The fund would be raised either through follow-on public issue, qualified institutional placement, rights issue, private placement, Global Depository Receipt, American Depository Receipt or combination of these, the bank had said.

SBI, in the previous fiscal, had raised Rs 8,032 crore by selling shares through the qualified institutional placement route.

SBI's share sale follows the last week's Rs 10,000 crore raised by the country's second largest private sector lender HDFC Bank through a follow-on offer.

HDFC Bank raised the funds from selling American Depository Receipts (ADRs) and India-listed shares to qualified institutional investors.

Previous week, the government had announced to infuse Rs 2,970 crore in SBI under its Rs 11,200 crore capitalisation plan for public sector banks announced in the Budget for 2014-15.

In the first tranche of capital infusion, the government will inject Rs 6,990 crore in nine public sector banks.

Besides SBI, the government will inject Rs 1,260 crore in Bank of Baroda, Rs 870 crore in Punjab National Bank and Rs 570 crore in Canara Bank.