Tata Steel's $770m offer covered over 6 times

Tata Steel's up to $770 million share sale was covered more than six times on the final day, reflecting investor confidence in the steelmaker's growth prospects in a fast-expanding economy.
The world's No. 7 steelmaker was offering 57 million shares in the issue to partly fund a 3-million-tonne capacity expansion at its Jamshedpur plant in eastern India, repay a part of its $10 billion debt and invest in other projects.
Earlier this week, Tata Steel raised 5.08 billion rupees ($112 million) from 33 anchor investors that included the Abu Dhabi Investment, Government of Singapore, and investment arms of Fidelity, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.
The public offer for the remaining 48.7 million shares opened on Jan. 19 and closed on Friday.
The institutional order book was subscribed more than 10 times by close, helped by orders worth about $746 million from foreign investors.
Retail investor bid for more than one-and-a-half times the shares reserved for them, but the allocation for employees was not fully covered.
Most bids came at the top end of the 594 rupees to 610 rupees indicative price range, stock exchange data showed.
Indian companies raised $24.9 billion from equity issues in 2010, posting a growth of 22 percent from the previous year and marking its best annual performance since 2007.
The fundraising last year had been bolstered by a firm stock market and increased appetite among foreign portfolio investors looking to tap growth opportunities in Asia's third-largest economy growing at 8.5 percent.
RBS, HSBC, SBI Capital, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered and Kotak Mahindra were managers to the Tata Steel offering -- the biggest so far this year in India.
Shares in Tata Steel, valued at $12.6 billion, ended down 0.8 percent on Friday at 629.60 rupees in a Mumbai market that fell 0.2 percent. It had risen about 10 percent in 2010, less than a 17.4 percent rise in the main index.