Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) -- BSE Ltd., Asia’s oldest stock exchange, plans to sell shares in an initial public offering in the next eight months as competition intensifies with a third Indian bourse planning to start operations.
The bourse, formerly known as the Bombay Stock Exchange and backed by Deutsche Boerse AG, will offer 25 percent of its shares in the sale, interim Chief Executive Officer Ashishkumar Chauhan said yesterday in Chennai. Chauhan took temporary charge of the exchange when previous CEO Madhu Kannan quit in May.
“The offer for sale would provide an exit option for current investors,” he said. The exchange’s board has set up an IPO committee to complete the share sale, he said.
National Stock Exchange of India Ltd., backed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and BSE’s main rival in India’s $1.1 trillion share-trading market, handles twice the amount of shares of its 136-year-old competitor and controls 90 percent of the nation’s
$28 billion equity derivatives market.
BSE has “ventured into new products and segments such as derivatives recently and that would probably have made them confident about tapping the markets at a time when many investors are expecting a rebound in stocks later this year,”
D.K. Aggarwal, chairman of SMC Investments & Advisors Ltd., which has about $100 million in assets, said from New Delhi. “A listing could help them enhance their brand and profile.”
Record inflows from foreign funds this year have helped the benchmark BSE India Sensitive Index rally 14 percent after a 25 percent decline in 2011, its second-worst annual loss.
Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd., backed by Fidelity International Ltd., in March became the first Indian bourse to sell shares in an initial public offering. The sale was oversubscribed 54 times as investors bet the exchange will benefit from expanding trade in bullion, metals, crude oil and agriculture contracts.
Competition for BSE is set to intensify when MCX-backed MCX Stock Exchange Ltd. becomes the third Indian bourse to trade local equities this year.
India’s market regulator in April agreed to allow exchanges to sell shares once the bourse enacts rules to tackle conflicts of interest.