Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Templeton, ICICI Prudential Life and HDFC Mutual Fund are among the bulgebracket investors to have bought into L&T Finance Friday, which successfully raised about Rs 1,000 crore in an exclusive share sale to institutions, two top market sources told ET.

“Both domestic and foreign institutional investors were keen to have their share of the pie as they see a great potential for non-banking finance companies amid sluggish bank-credit growth,” said one of the persons cited above.

The company said to have received overwhelming response of more than Rs 1,700 crore for the issue.

The L&T Finance spokesperson declined to comment. Individual banks could not be immediately reached.

L&T Finance Holdings shares gained 0.8 per cent to close at Rs 160 on the BSE Friday.

Citi Group, Edelweiss Financial Services, Motilal Oswal and JM Financial Services were the investment bankers for the sale.

Through this share sale to institutions, the company was supposed to reduce about 2.3-3.3 per cent of its equity. With the increase in size, the dilution will be more. The minimum application size was 2,000 equity shares.

Shares in L&T Finance have surged about 32 per cent in the past one year, compared with a 15.4 per cent climb in the Sensex.

In a separate move earlier in the day, L&T Finance Holdings said that it has completed the process of a preferential allotment to its parent Larsen & Toubro. The allotment of about 108 million shares of Rs 10 each was made at the issue price of Rs 185.51.

Meanwhile, HDFC Bank has appointed arrangers, including Bank of America Corp, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse Group AG, for a Rs 15,500-crore planned share sale, Bloomberg reported.