Government to name legal advisors for stake sale of WAPCOS, TCIL

Taking forward the initial public offer (IPO) process for selling its stake in state-run WAPCOS and telecom firm TCIL, the Government is likely to appoint legal advisors on January 3, 2020 for which SNG and Partners, L&L Partners, as well as Crawford Bayley and Co are in the fray after being shortlisted.

According to the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM), while SNG and Partners and L&L Partners are in fray for both WAPCOS and TCIL, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and Crawford Bayley and Co are in the competition for WAPCOS.

Thus WAPCOS and Telecommunications Consultants India (TCIL) are in the pipeline for listing, while IRCTC, RITES have already been listed.

The Government may sell 25 % stake TCIL. The Mini Ratna-I category WAPCOS is a technology-driven consultancy and engineering-procurement-construction (EPC) firm falls under the Water Resources Ministry.

TCIL has posted a provisional operating turnover in September of the fiscal 2019-20 at Rs. 700.41 crore, against Rs. 625.09 crore in the same period of the previous fiscal.

The Centre has a disinvestment target of Rs. 1.05 crore for the current fiscal (2019-20) but no big ticket sale of stakes has taken place so far.

During this fiscal, Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL) fetched Rs. 475 crore in IPO. The Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSE)-Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) fetched Rs 10,000 crore through FFO-V and the Bharat 22-ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) fetched Rs. 4,369 crore under FFO 2 (Tranche 4).

The IRCTC’s listing fetched Rs. 638 crore and the recently oversubscribed Bharat Bond ETF had garnered Rs. 12,000 crore.

With only three months remaining in the fiscal, the BPCL and Air India stake sales are expected to take place by end March 2020.