BANGALORE: Indian IT bellwether Infosys Technologies Limited announced the
pricing of its sponsored secondary offering of 14 million American Depositary
Shares (ADS), representing 14 million equity shares (one equity share
represents one ADS) at $67.00 per ADS. The underwriters have a seven-day option
to purchase up to two million additional ADSs, representing two million equity
shares.
The size of the offering is expected to exceed $1 billion. As part of this ADS offering, 3.2 million ADS representing 3.2 million shares will be placed with Japanese investors through a Public Offer without Listing (POWL). This is the first POWL issue by any Indian company.
Infosys will not receive any proceeds of this offering and the net proceeds after the issue expenses will be distributed to the selling shareholders within 30 days of the closing of the offering. On May 19, 2005 the Indian Invitation to Offer concluded, with 14,693 offers for 52,388,377 equity shares being offered for sale in the sponsored secondary ADS offering. The maximum offer size of the Indian Invitation to Offer was 16 million equity shares. The unsold shares will be returned to all the selling shareholders by June 15, 2005. The combined holdings of all the shareholders who offered their shares in the Indian Invitation to Offer was 184,307,948 equity shares.
The Offering was lead-managed by Citigroup, Deutsche Bank Securities, Goldman Sachs (Asia) L.L.C., and UBS Investment Bank and co-managed by ABN AMRO Rothschild LLC, Banc of America Securities L.L.C. and Nomura International. Nomura Securities acted as the sole book runner for the POWL. Enam Financial Consultants Private Limited acted as the Indian financial advisor to the offering.