Pakistan Stock Exchange starts bidding to sell its 20% stake

Floor price set at Rs28 per share, is second such endeavour in South Asia

KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) began accepting bids from high net-worth individuals on Tuesday, as it seeks a strike price through the book-building process.

The two-day exercise is meant to offer 20% stake in the PSX to retail investors and high net-worth individuals. Bidding started from a floor price of Rs28 per share.

The PSX is selling 20% stake, or 160 million shares, to investors at a strike price to be found at the end of the bidding process. “The entire issue is being offered via book-building process [bidding process] to Institutional / High net-worth individual investors,” a PSX press statement said on Tuesday.

“Twenty-five percent of the offer size - 40.074 million shares - shall be offered to the Retail Investors at the strike price and any shares that remain unsubscribed by the general public shall be allocated at pro-rata to successful investors as per the book building process,” it said.

“The divestment of shares of Pakistan Stock Exchange is a historic event and provides a great opportunity to investors to acquire shares of the country’s only Stock Exchange,” it said. This offering to the public is taking place after a Chinese-led Consortium bought 40% of the PSX shareholding at a price of Rs28 per share.

This public offering of shares will be the second of its kind in South Asia after the Bombay Stock Exchange offered shares to the public four months ago which was highly oversubscribed.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 7^th, 2017.

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