ICICI Bank still a global pygmy

ICICI Bank Ltd’s market capitalization is set to cross the Rs1 trillion mark following its current equity offering, but that number still doesn’t make it a big bank by global standards.
The largest private sector lender in India is in the market with a public issue that will take its total number of shares to 1,111.22 million. At Wednesday’s closing price of Rs947.85, ICICI Bank’s market capitalization on its expanded equity base will be about Rs1.05 trillion.

This is much higher than State Bank of India’s (SBI) Rs75,000 crore market cap.
Globally, Citigroup has a market capitalization that is more than 10 times ICICI Bank’s at $268.3 billion (Rs11 trillion). Bank of America’s market capitalization is $224.33 billion. And Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, Asia’s largest bank, has a market capitalization of $218.23 billion.

ICICI Bank’s public issue was subscribed 3.15 times on the second day, with investors bidding for 311 million shares against the total issue size of 98.8 million shares.
The qualified institutional buyers—foreign investors, banks and mutual funds —subscribed their portion 6.2 times.

However, retail investors are still staying away from the issue, despite sops given by the bank in terms of a Rs50 discount to the final price and a staggered payment for the shares.
The retail portion was subscribed 0.03 times on the second day.

Shares of ICICI Bank rose by 0.37% on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), while the exchange’s benchmark index, Sensex, rose 0.81% to close at 14,411.95.

Bank stocks continued to rally on the exchange and the Bankex, the banking index of BSE, rose 1.42% to close at 7,790.27. Shares of SBI rose by 3.85% to close at Rs1,425.20.

The third Indian bank in terms of market capitalization, HDFC Bank Ltd, is less than half SBI’s size by market capitalization.

Following the public issue, ICICI Bank will become the eighth member of the trillion- rupee market cap firms on Indian bourses.

Reliance Industries Ltd now heads the list, followed by Oil and Natural Gas Corp., Bharti Airtel Ltd, NTPC Ltd, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Reliance Communication Ltd too has a market capitalization of more than Rs1 trillion, just behind ICICI Bank. The list of the top 10 Indian firms in terms of market capitalization also includes DLF Ltd, which will list on the exchanges soon, and Wipro Ltd.

Delhi-based realtor DLF, which recently concluded its public issue, will have a market cap of Rs0.9 trillion assuming that its stock lists at the issue price of Rs525.