Mumbai, May 24: Real estate company DLF today announced a price band of Rs 500-550 per share for its initial public offering. DLF can raise a maximum of Rs 9,625 crore from the issue against an earlier estimate of Rs 13,600 crore.

DLF proposes to enter the market with a public issue of 17.5 crore shares of Rs 2 each through the 100 per cent book-building route.

About 10 lakh shares will be reserved for the employees, while 17.4 crore shares will be offered to the public. The issue will open on June 11 and close on June 14. It will constitute 10.27 per cent of the fully diluted post-issue capital of the company.

The proceeds of the issue will be used to augment the company’s capital base.

It was speculated that the DLF management was keen on a price band of up to Rs 600 at the upper end. However, even at the current range, the issue could raise between $2.2-2.4 billion. Though this is less than the $3.5 billion which DLF planned to raise initially, the IPO is still the biggest in India.

Kotak Mahindra Capital and DSP Merrill Lynch are the global coordinators and book-running lead managers. Lehman Brothers Securities is the senior book-running lead manager. Citigroup Global Markets India, Deutsche Equities India, ICICI Securities Primary Dealership and UBS Securities India are the book-running lead managers. SBI Capital Market is the co-book running lead manager and Karvy Computershare Pvt Ltd is the registrar.

The company had received the approval from Sebi for its IPO on May 7. This came nearly a year after it first filed the draft prospectus.

DLF had filed a renewed prospectus in January. The first prospectus was withdrawn after differences with minority shareholders over allotment of debentures. The minority shareholders had complained to Sebi that they did not receive the letter of offer for the debentures issued by the company in December 2005.

DLF had proposed to offer 20.2 crore equity shares. It had filed its first prospectus in May 2006, which it withdrew in August. “The company could raise more than or equal to Rs 13,600 crore,” a company official had said in January.

However, in November, DLF resolved the differences, which paved the way for the revival of its IPO plan.

DLF, which has a presence in all the verticals of real estate, including SEZs, has currently 46 million sqft under development in various projects and a land bank of over 10,200 acres.

The company has formed a joint venture with global hospitality major Hilton for its hotel business.

It has also tied up with the UAE-based Nakheel to develop townships projects.

The IPO will boost the personal wealth of its founder- promoter Kushal Pal Singh to over $20 billion based on his shareholding in the company.

Singh was ranked as the fifth-richest Indian by the US business magazine Forbes earlier this year with a net worth of $10 billion.

As the public issue is for 10.27 per cent of the equity, DLF’s market cap would rise to Rs 93,720 crore (about $23 billion), making it among the top ten listed firms.

The company will be the biggest listed real estate entity after its entry to the capital market.