ICICI Bank, raising up to $4.9 billion in the largest share sale, filled the local order book for its offering within an hour on Tuesday as investors bet the consumer-focused lender will be a key beneficiary of the country’s surging economy.Investors applied for nearly two times the $2.1 billion worth of shares being sold to domestic investors by the second-largest bank, with large funds clamouring for access to the private sector lender that is viewed as a pace-setter in the country’s often creaky financial sector.A similar-sized share sale will be offered to the US investors, and a 15 per cent over-allotment could push the total size of the fund raising to $4.9 billion for ICICI, which is listed both in Mumbai and New York.With assets of more than $79 billion — behind only government-run State Bank of India — ICICI built its business by aggressively chasing consumer loans when India opened its economy in the 1990s and spurred rapid economic growth. “It is a retail success story. to build this kind of an organisation at such a fast pace is difficult,” said Abhishek Shukla, analyst at First Global Securities. “Because of ICICI, there’s a lot of pressure on others to perform,” he said, adding, however, that rising interest rates threatened an increase in bad loans.The bank has set an indicated price band of Rs 885-950 a share, with retail investors getting a Rs 50 discount to the final price that will be fixed after the issue closes. The company is selling 19-20 per cent of its expanded share capital to fund loan growth while maintaining its capital adequacy ratio.
