British multinational telecommunications company Vodafone has mandated Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA), Kotak Investment Banking and UBS as joint global coordinators for the IPO of its Indian unit.
The IPO is expected to raise between $2-2.5 billion, which, at the upper end, would make it India’s biggest stock market listing since state-owned Coal India Ltd raised $3.5 billion in 2010.
HSBC, ICICI Securities and Deutsche Bank have won joint book-runner roles, the people added. Vodafone is likely to launch the IPO early next year, they said.
The deal offers a good opportunity for international banks in a market where equity capital raisings worth over $1 billion are uncommon and where stock underwriting fees are amongst the lowest in the world.
Vodafone had raised the prospect of a listing in India as early as 2011. The company is one of the largest investors in Asia’s third-largest economy and is expected to use the proceeds to purchase additional radio spectrum and expand its operations across India’s highly competitive telecoms market.
In 2007, Vodafone entered India, when it acquired a majority stake in Hutchison Essar and since 2014 has wholly owned Vodafone India, which operates in a market that has more than a billion mobile subscribers – the second-biggest market in the world behind China.