India's L&T Finance Holdings' 12.45 billion rupee ($280 million) initial public offering was covered 5.2 times on the last day for bids, holding out hope for a long list of share-sale aspirants, amid a weak equity market. Most bids came at the top of the 51-59 rupees a share price range, data showed.
The company, a unit of Indian engineering conglomerate Larsen & Toubro, was offering 214.51 million shares to raise funds for strengthening its capital base, for lending and for repayment of debt. Earlier this week, L&T Finance raised around $36 million from three cornerstone investors including DSP BlackRock, Malaysia's Khazanah and US private-equity fund Capital International. It had earlier raised $75 million in a pre-IPO share placement to Capital International. Indian companies have raised $7.1 billion in equity in the first half of 2011, down 42 percent from the year-ago period, Thomson Reuters data showed.