How was the response to the anchor book placement of Metro Brands?

On 09 December, the anchor book placement of Metro Brands saw good and robust response. The Metro Brands business has been backed by Rakesh Jhunjhunwala since 2007. Th IPO of Metro Brands will be open for subscription till 14th December. Anchor shares to QIBs are done at the discovered IPO price and entail a lock in period of just 1 month after which the investor can sell and exit the stock.

There was strong response to the Metro Brands anchor book placement. A total of 82.05 lakh shares were allotted to a total of 28 global and domestic anchor investors. This allotment to the anchor investors was done at the upper IPO price band of Rs.500 with overall anchor size at Rs.410.25 crore. That is nearly 30% of the overall issue size. A total of 16 anchors who were allotted more than 3.5 accounted for 78.18% of the anchor allocation.

It must be noted here that the QIB portion in the IPO will be reduced to the extent of the anchor placement done ahead of the IPO. Only the balance shares will be available for QIB allocation in the IPO issue process. Metro Brands saw good interest coming from domestic mutual funds, domestic insurance companies and global foreign portfolio investors.

Major global investors in the anchor book included Goldman Sachs, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority or ADIA, University of Notre Dame, Indus Fund, GMO Emerging Markets and Valiant India. Among the domestic funds and insurances in the anchor list were SBI Life, HDFC Life, ICICI Pru Mutual Fund, Kotak MF, UTI MF, Tata MF and Sundaram MF. IN fact, mutual fund accounted for 33.39% of the total anchor placement.