Mines Minister Dinsha Patel said when asked about it. Asked whether the move before the FPO was SEBI compliant, he said: "Any decision which is taken will be within the rules and guidelines." The NALCO official, however, said the investment if finalized may take place either before the FPO or after it. NALCO had filed its draft red herring prospectus with the SEBI in September and the government is to take a call on the timing of the FPO, which was earlier scheduled for December2010. Last month, Disinvestment Secretary Sumit Bose had indicated that HCL FPO might come this fiscal. The Cabinet had in June last year approved disinvestment in NALCO and accordingly, in July the Copper miner had appointed UBS Securities, ICICI Securities, SBI Capital, Kotak Mahindra and Enam Securities as the managers of the issue. The 20 per cent share sale programme, earlier aimed at garnering about Rs 4,000 crore (Rs 40 billion), was slated to begin on December 6 and close on December 9. HCL would use the proceeds to ramp up its production to 12 million tonne per annum by 2017 from 3.15 MTPA now. HCL's 0.41 per cent stake is already with the public. The proposed FPO would see the government holding coming down to 81.44 per cent from the present 99.59 per cent. Shares of the copper miner were trading at Rs 264 apiece, up 2.96 per cent from the previous close on the Bombay Stock Exchange in the afternoon trade.
ONGC FPO may hit market on Mar 15