The 10 percent stake sale in Coal India Limited (CIL) through a one-day offer has been oversubscribed. According to the NSE website, while the retail portion (where investment is done up to Rs 2 lakh) was undersubscribed (0.42), the institutional category was oversubscribed by 1.2 times. The government may stretch about Rs 22,600 crore bid.

The CIL offer was set at the floor price of Rs 358, which was below the closing of Rs 374 at the end of the market hours on Thursday, offering a 4.5 percent discount.

For CIL stake sale, the govt had doubled to 20 percent of the quota reserved for retail investors, who can buy shares worth up to Rs 2 lakh in the share sale.

This is also the first stake sale in which the government has considerably reduced the time gap between the announcement of disinvestment and the date of offers, in order to save the beating down of share price.

The government had offered 10 percent of its stake in the state-owned CIL through an offer for sale route on Friday.

The government’s stake in CIL has been reduced by 10 percent to 79.65 percent.

Earlier this month, the trade unions in CIL had gone on a strike protesting against the stake sale, but it was later called off.

Under the disinvestment programme of the current government, CIL is the second company to hit the market. Earlier in December, the government earned over Rs 1,700 crores through 5 percent stake sale in steel giant SAIL.