Saturday, March 13, 2010

LIC - The knight to the rescue...

The government has shown who is the boss. When it comes to raising money by selling shares in PSU undertakings to the 'public', no stone is left unturned.
The retail generally ducks these issues, because there is no merchant banker or broker telling them to invest.
The merchant banker does not tell them to invest because he gets peanut shells for managing the issue. All he does is try and fix some FII's in to applying. For the HNI's there is always the window of 'Loan Against Shares' available.
However,the government gets retail money in huge chunks.

LIC, PSU Banks and some other PSU's are arm twisted in to putting in large cheques for overpriced issues.

No one protests, least of all the dummies at LIC. They know which side their butter is hidden. No one is going to hang them for applying in PSU IPO/FPO's after pressure from the ministry. If they do not, they can be punished or harassed. So, the babu at LIC will take the easy way out and screw the policyholders.

So, the government is serious about raising money through the so called 'dis-investment' route and none of us should doubt it.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Incisive post, as usual, Bala... I remember when this whole disinvestment thing started. When foreign investors were calling it "privatization" and actually believing that's what it might be.

- Rupa Bose

Puneet said...

And you can see SEBI did not listed LIC ..and any other PSU insurers..in their recent ban on ULIPS..all other 14 private sector companies were issues notice ..
coincidence? NO I don't think so.