HDFC Bank Picks BofA, Morgan Stanley for Shadow Bank IPO

(Bloomberg) -- HDFC Bank Ltd., India’s biggest lender by market value, has picked Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley to manage an initial public offering of its non-bank finance unit, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The bank plans to sell the shares in HDB Financial Services Ltd. before March 31 in a deal that may raise about 100 billion rupees ($1.4 billion), the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is not public. HDFC Bank may hire more firms for the sale later, the people said.

Selling shares in the unit will help the bank led by Managing Director Aditya Puri raise funds to expand lending as many non-bank financiers grapple with a liquidity crunch. The credit profile of HDB Financial has remained unscathed even as many other shadow lenders in the country were hit by rising borrowing costs after the nation’s credit market largely shunned them post a crisis at Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services last year.

“HDB financial will get high valuation at listing and investors will lap it up on account of its strong capitalization, growing retail loan book and the parentage of HDFC Bank,” said Siddharth Purohit, a banking analyst at SMC Global Securities. “The listing will give a valuation boost to HDFC bank too.”

Spokesmen for HDFC Bank and Bank of America didn’t immediately comment while a spokeswoman for Morgan Stanley declined to comment. HDFC Bank’s shares rose 1.9% to 2,467.00 rupees at 2:57 p.m. in Mumbai.

HDB Financial reported a profit of 11.5 billion rupees in the year ended March 31 on a total income of 87 billion rupees, data available on the lender’s website shows.

To contact the reporter on this story: Baiju Kalesh in Mumbai at bkalesh@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Arijit Ghosh at aghosh@bloomberg.net, ;Fion Li at fli59@bloomberg.net, Anto Antony

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