Khazanah sells Yes Bank stake for $105 mln: sources

13/03/2012 21:45 AST

Malaysia's state investment arm, Khazanah Nasional, has sold its about 4.2 percent holding in private sector lender Yes Bank (YESB.NS) for about $105 million in market block deals, two sources with direct knowledge of the deal said on Monday.

The share sale comes after investors Carlyle Group, Warburg Pincus and Temasek Holdings last month took advantage of India's recent market gains to pare stakes in three financial companies in deals worth about $740 million.

The BSE Sensex is up 14 percent so far this year, mainly led by financial stocks.

Titiwangsa Investments Mauritius Ltd, an investment arm of Khazanah, held 14.7 million shares in Mumbai-based Yes Bank as on end-December, according to the stock exchange data.

The Yes Bank shares, sold in block deals on Monday morning, were bought by a clutch of overseas and domestic institutional investors, said one of the sources, declining to be named as the information is not public yet.

Yes Bank, in which the Netherlands' largest retail bank Rabobank RABO.UL holds a 4.8 percent stake, and Khazanah declined to comment.

The Yes Bank shares were sold at about 362 rupees apiece, a 1.2 percent discount to their Friday close, the source said, adding the price band for the deal was fixed at 360 rupees to 362 rupees a share.

"There was a very good response for the issue. The book was oversubscribed and we closed the book within two hours of launch early this morning," the source said.

Shares in Yes Bank, which the market values at $2.6 billion, was trading down nearly 2 percent at 359.10 rupees at 11:27 a.m. (0557 GMT), while the BSE Sensex was up 0.3 percent. The stock is up nearly 50 percent this year.

Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) was the bookrunner for the deal, the sources said.

Buyout firms that invested billions of dollars during the Indian market's boom years before the global financial crisis are widely expected to look for opportunities to cash in their holdings, with more stake sales anticipated in coming months.

Nearly $5.3 billion has already been raised in India share sales via 10 deals so far in 2012, more than half of roughly $9 billion in all of 2011 from 84 issues, Thomson Reuters data showed.

Reuters