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The Securities and Exchange Board of India has extended the market timing for Reliance Petroleum Ltd's IPO by eight hours owing to huge investor interest in the public issue.
Application to RPL (a unit of Reliance Industries Ltd) shares can be made till 9 pm on Wednesday and Thursday. Besides, extra counters have been put up and additional applications forms made available to accommodate the huge turnout of applicants.
The IPO for 45 crore equity shares of RPL, which is building a 580,000 barrels per day refinery adjacent to RIL's existing 660,000 barrels per day refinery at Jamnagar in Gujarat, is to close on Thursday.
"The IPO market timings were 10 am to 5 pm but owing to heavy rush, SEBI has extended the time by which applications can be made on April 19 and 20 to 9 pm," a market source said.
The IPO had been oversubscribed 16 times, with Qualified Institutional Buyers making bids for 18 times the number of shares offered/reserved for them. Non-Institutional Investors made offers for 8.8 times of total shares reserved for the category.
Sixty per cent of the shares on offer have been reserved for QIBs, while 4.5 crore shares have been blocked for Non Institutional Investors. Retail investors can get a maximum of 13.5 crore shares.
A Reliance official said the company had deployed 50 per cent extra counters and supplied additional application forms as the existing counters were swarmed by investors. "There is mad demand," he said.
Sources said the exchanges have officially announced extension of IPO market timing in view of unprecedented demand for RPL shares leading to a huge load on brokers all over the country to punch data into BSE and NSE systems.
One of the reasons being attributed to the heavy turnout is the firming up of global crude oil prices, which touched a record $72 per barrel.
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