LIC IPO: Inside the all-out marketing campaign to organize India’s biggest-ever IPO

In Mumbai’s smooth skyscrapers, harried bankers race the clock to appraise an organization that hasn’t been valued in many years. Bureaucrats burn the midnight oil in New Delhi, working by means of energy cuts to tug collectively an preliminary public providing to rival any in Asia this 12 months. And throughout the hinterland, front-page newspaper advertisements alert greater than 250 million coverage holders of the possibility to personal a bit of an organization almost as outdated as post-independence India.
For virtually two years, India has steeled itself for a gargantuan activity: readying the nation’s premier insurer — with almost $500 billion in belongings and a valuation estimated as excessive as $203 billion — for what might change into its biggest-ever inventory itemizing. Some bankers have described the general public providing of Life Insurance Corp. of India, or LIC, as India’s Aramco second. As with the Gulf oil large’s $29.4 billion itemizing, the world’s largest, LIC’s debut will check the depth of the nation’s capital markets and international urge for food for its state-owned crown jewel.
Success is way from assured. With about two months to the focused launch, consultants have been pouring over reams of coverage paperwork to provide you with LIC’s embedded value — a key valuation metric. Bankers say international buyers fear in regards to the autonomy of an establishment frequently pressed into service to rescue teetering banks and floundering state belongings. Local buyers are skeptical the 65-year-old agency can compete towards up-and-comers.

A knock-out itemizing might see LIC elevate as a lot as $10 billion from the IPO with a minimal dilution of 5%. That would make it the third greatest globally involving an insurer. More importantly, it might burnish Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s status as a market-oriented reformer forward of key state elections and assist plug a gaping funds deficit.

“If the listing happens, it could change the global image of India,” stated James Beeland Rogers, who’s been investing in rising markets for a couple of many years and is the chairman of Beeland Interests Inc. and Rogers Holdings.
Sizing up a Giant
LIC is a family identify in India. With 2,000 branches, greater than 100,000 staff and 286 million insurance policies, the Mumbai-headquartered firm reaches virtually each nook of the nation. The sheer dimension of LIC lays naked the challenges of itemizing what’s successfully a black field.
The insurer releases its steadiness sheet solely every year, which means there aren’t any publicly out there numbers to discern its embedded worth, which mixes the present worth of future income with the online worth of belongings. Milliman and Ernst & Young executives overseeing the valuation should sift by means of piles of insurance policies to account for parameters as wide-ranging as mortalities, morbidities, lapses and surrenders.
Source: Bloomberg
Comparisons with friends are difficult. LIC, which was based in 1956, follows guidelines set by a novel parliamentary act slightly than the legislation that governs the nation’s different insurance coverage corporations. In March 2020, LIC’s property holdings had been internally valued at about $5.8 billion, in keeping with an individual with information of the matter, although it’s unclear whether or not all of this was adjusted to present market charges.
LIC plans to file the draft IPO prospectus within the ultimate week of January, which is able to present the embedded worth in addition to the variety of shares on the market, in keeping with folks with information of the matter.

Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s finance minister, speaks throughout a information convention on the National Media Center in New Delhi, India, on Monday, Nov. 15, 2021. (Bloomberg)
“The due internal valuation, which is required to be done you would presume by a company of that size almost annually, hasn’t been done,” Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s finance minister, stated in an October interview with Bloomberg. “The essentials of keeping valuations prim and proper — and the efforts that are required to keep them valuated appropriately — are all being done now.”
Sitharaman has set a March deadline for the itemizing. If buyers agree with the $203 billion valuation sought by the federal government, LIC would compete towards India’s greatest corporations — Reliance Industries Ltd. and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. The IPO would account for the majority of a $23.5 billion asset-sale goal wanted to plug India’s widening funds deficit, which is forecast to be 6.8% this 12 months.
LIC declined to remark.
Investors Want Answers
Another problem is convincing overseas buyers that LIC will ship for them.
Ten bankers managing the itemizing spoke with virtually all massive funds that may very well be fascinated by shopping for shares, together with GIC Re, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Blackrock Inc. and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, in keeping with folks conversant in the matter.
Many of Mumbai’s globe-trotting buyers wished to know whether or not LIC would have larger autonomy from India’s authorities after the itemizing. They had been initially skeptical, the folks stated, noting that the corporate bears the marks of a slow-moving arm of the institution.

With arrangers every receiving no less than 10 million rupees ($135,000) in charges, the precise earnings from the LIC transaction could be minuscule if you happen to stripped away the status of delivering what could be the most important share sale in India’s already red-hot market, among the folks stated.
GIC and Blackrock didn’t reply to requests for remark. CPPIB and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority declined to remark.
Source: Bloomberg
But for deep-pocketed buyers who don’t have many locations to park their cash after China’s expertise curbs final 12 months, LIC might nonetheless be a superb guess. The firm has one of many highest belongings underneath administration by an insurer globally, proudly owning two-thirds of India’s insurance coverage market share.
LIC additionally has a sovereign assure on all cost liabilities, which means it may well function with a thinner capital base than its opponents. With a valuation probably 4 instances larger than AIG, the corporate might enchantment to buyers hunkering for returns and security.
Mark Mobius, co-founder of Mobius Capital Partners, poses for {a photograph} following a Bloomberg Television interview in London, U.Okay., on Wednesday, May 15, 2019. (Bloomberg)
“The Life Insurance Corporation’s IPO is an excellent development not only for India’s capital markets, but also for India’s economic growth,” stated Mark Mobius, the veteran emerging-markets investor and founding father of Mobius Capital Partners LLC.
He stated itemizing huge state-owned enterprises like LIC ends in “an expanded market capitalization of the Indian market generally with greater liquidity, making it attractive to large investors like pension funds and endowments not only in India but abroad.”
India had a bumper 12 months for IPOs final 12 months and a strong debut by LIC would solely construct on that momentum. Listings raised round $18 billion in 2021, even with blended outcomes from among the extra hyped entries, which included Paytm, a digital funds service, and Zomato, a meals supply startup.
An All-India Heave
As the deadline nears, India’s labyrinthine paperwork has change into a stress cooker.
Officials from the Department of Disinvestment are pulling all-nighters, double-checking tons of of filings and opening their doorways to let in weak winter daylight when New Delhi’s energy grid provides out. Bankers are working by means of vacation journeys within the Himalayas and the Maldives. LIC executives stated they’re lacking birthdays, giving up weekends and dealing by means of diseases.
Indians in rural areas are dashing to make sure their eligibility for receiving a bit of the pie. LIC has began sending SMS blasts to its brokers and publishing newspaper advertisements with the title: “It’s best in life to be prepared.”
Raj Kumar Shukla, a advertising supervisor who lives in Kiraoli, a village in northern India, stated a pal alerted him to the IPO, which pushed him to obtain an app to trace inventory indexes. He saved 50,000 rupees (about $670) and opened a demat account so he might put money into LIC.
“The government will benefit from this listing,” he stated. “They can use the money for the development of the nation.”
Modi’s critics have framed the disinvestment drive in a different way. Anshul Avijit, a nationwide spokesperson for Indian National Congress, the most important opposition get together, stated in an interview that the IPO amounted to “handing over our critical resources, slowly and gradually, to a few select private hands.” He referred to as the measure “anti-poor.”
But not like Aramco’s 2019 IPO, when Saudi Arabia leaned on rich residents to purchase inventory after international funds balked on the kingdom’s excessive preliminary valuation, Modi’s authorities has lobbied for a special method: providing as a lot as 10% of LIC’s IPO shares to coverage holders unfold throughout the nation.
Giving atypical Indians a share in LIC could supply political ammunition forward of regional elections beginning subsequent month. Many coverage holders are scattered in northern India, the place the governing Bharatiya Janata Party hopes to carry onto energy.
“The Prime Minister has always said ‘the government has no business to be in business,’” stated Gopal Krishna Agarwal, a nationwide spokesperson for the B.J.P. “As a party, as an ideology, we believe in the free market economy.”
Whether all the items come collectively is anybody’s guess. But the potential rewards are bountiful: Nearly half of the IPO may very well be raised from particular person buyers, together with academics, small enterprise homeowners and fogeys saving up for his or her youngsters’s faculty funds.

A homegrown model lengthy acknowledged in each pocket of India, from mountainous Kashmir to villages within the Andaman Islands, would possibly quickly have clout world wide.
“I’m telling all my clients to invest in it,” stated Bhagvati Prasad Sharma, considered one of LIC’s 1.3 million brokers.