KARACHI: The minimum or floor price has been set at Rs205 per share for the divestment of 70.06 million shares, representing 3.55pc of the paid-up capital of the company from the government held equity in Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL).

Analysts noted that the floor price was placed at around four per cent discount to the Wednesday’s market closing price of the PPL stock at Rs214.

The Ministry of Finance, acting through the Privatisation Commission (PC), declared on Wednesday that the Cabinet Committee on Privatisation (CCoP) and Privatisation Commission Board in a meeting on Wednesday considered and approved the minimum price/floor price of Rs205 per share for the sale of shares.

“It may be clarified that any bid placed below the floor price in respect of the offer will not be entertained,” the PC stated.

It further referred to the offer for sale document for book building published on June 22 and confirmed that the book building process would commence on June 26 to June 27 (both days inclusive) from 9am to 5pm.

The CCoP had approved secondary public offering (SPO) of 70.05m shares in PPL the previous Friday, stating that the offer would be open to both international and domestic institutional investors and high net worth individuals (HNWI) through a book building process.

A person in the know of things said that the government hopes to realise Rs15bn from the sale of 70.05m shares.

The PPL transaction comes quickly on the heels of the mid-June sale of 19.8pc shares of government holding in United Bank Limited (UBL) also through the book building process.

The CCoP has also approved offering of 7m shares of PPL to the general public with preference to existing employees of the company through a subsequent subscription process within next few months.

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2014