Four law firms in race to advise LIC IPO

To get sufficient interest from potential bidders, DIPAM relaxed certain norms to on payment of fees, wherein the selected legal adviser can now get half of its fees after filing of the Draft Red Herring Prospectus and the balance after the listing of LIC.

Four law firms, including Crawford Bayley and Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, are in the race to act as adviser for the mega listing of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) in the March quarter. The other two firms are Link Legal and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas.

Following insufficient demand received in the first request for proposal (RFP), the department of investment and public asset management (DIPAM) had recently floated a fresh RFP to select a legal adviser for the IPO of the insurance behemoth.

To get sufficient interest from potential bidders, DIPAM relaxed certain norms to on payment of fees, wherein the selected legal adviser can now get half of its fees after filing of the Draft Red Herring Prospectus and the balance after the listing of LIC.

Earlier, the selected bidder was supposed to get the advisory fee only after successful completion of the transaction. The four shortlisted legal firms will make their presentations to DIPAM on Friday.

The mega IPO of LIC is expected to be completed in the current financial year. According to analysts, a 10% stake sale in LIC could fetch the government anything between Rs 80,000-100,000 crore, which is crucial to achieve the disinvestment target for FY22.