(Reuters) -India’s Canara Robeco Asset Management Company has filed for an initial public offering, draft papers showed on Friday, with its existing shareholders looking to sell stakes at a time when the IPO market is slowing.
Canara Robeco is a joint venture between India’s state-owned Canara Bank and Netherlands-headquartered ORIX Corporation Europe, which is a unit of Japan’s ORIX Corporation.
The firm, which manages more than 1 trillion rupees ($11.7 billion) in assets, will not issue fresh shares in the IPO, but the two owners will sell a combined 49.8 million shares.
Canara Bank will reduce its stake in the asset manager by 13% by selling 25.92 million shares via the listing. ORIX will sell 23.93 million shares.
The asset manager did not detail the size or timing of the IPO.
The listing is set to come at a time when rising global market volatility, driven by U.S. tariff flip-flops, is forcing companies to recalibrate IPO ambitions to avoid weak demand or failed listings.
India was the world’s second-largest market by IPO proceeds in 2024 but listings are down close to 15% this year, data compiled by LSEG showed.
Canara Robeco competes with other major asset managers such as HDFC Asset Management Company, Nippon Life India Asset Management and UTI Asset Management Company.
Its profit for the fiscal year ended March 2024 was 91% higher than a year ago, the draft prospectus showed, while revenue from operations was 55.4% higher.
In a country where physical assets still dominate financial savings, investments in mutual funds are on the rise, in tandem with greater financial awareness.
Mutual funds, as a portion of household financial savings, grew from 2% to around 7% between fiscal years 2021 and 2024, with investment value more than doubling to 2.4 trillion rupees, the prospectus showed, citing data from India’s central bank and Crisil Intelligence.
($1 = 85.3680 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Ananta Agarwal in Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala)
