Shareholders of Coforge Ltd, formerly known as NIIT Technologies, including its majority shareholder Baring Private Equity Asia, will sell securities worth as much as $750 million in the proposed American Depository Receipts/Shares (ADS) offering in the US, said a person aware of the development.
ADS is one of the routes of raising capital from the US public markets for non-US companies.
Coforge on Tuesday filed an offer document informing the stock exchanges that its shareholders will sell ADR in a US IPO. The entire share sale is a secondary offering and the company will not receive any money from the share sale.
Other equity shareholders of the company can also participate in this secondary share sale, the company said. Shareholders can intimate their willingness to participate in the offering between 18 November and 2 December.
Baring’s contribution to the share sale will stand at 100% of the proposed $750 million to be sold, if other shareholders do not offer their shares in the ADS offering.
Baring holds 50.18% stake in the company currently.
“The principal purposes of this offering are to create a public market for our ADSs and to facilitate our future access to the public equity markets. All ADSs sold in the offering will be sold on behalf of the selling shareholders. We will not receive any of the proceeds from the sale of the ADSs in this offering,” Coforge said in the offer document.
Investment banks Citigroup, JP Morgan and Bank of America are advising Coforge on this ADS offering.
A spokesperson for Baring Private Equity Asia could not be immediately reached for a comment.
With its ADS offering, Corforge will join companies such as Infosys and ICICI Bank who have previously issued such securities in the US market.
