Mumbai, Feb 23 (IANS) The follow-on public offer by state-run Rural Electrification Corp was oversubscribed 3.1 times, primarily due to huge support from financial institutions. However, the small investor displayed low appetite for the offer.

Till 4 p.m. Tuesday, total bids received were 532,658,490 against the 171,732,000 shares on offer, 3.12 times more than the offered shares, according to data available with the National Stock Exchange. The offer had started Feb 19 with the price band between Rs.203 - Rs.215.

A total of 349,906,740 bids were received from qualified institutional buyers (QIB) for the 85,691,000 shares reserved for this category.

A QIB is usually a financial institution that manages funds and includes banks, savings and loans institutions, and insurance companies.

However, retail investors and small buyers were hesitant to bid for the state-run firm's offer. In the non-QIB category only 20,882,100 bids were received out of the 86,041,000 reserved.

Another state-run peer NTPC's public offer too had seen a luke warm response for the first two days and ended up with bids barely 1.2 times more after public financial institutions like LIC and SBI saved the situation.

The NTPC offer price for retail investors was fixed at Rs.201, while that for qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) it was any price above Rs.201.

In the NTPC FPO, QIBs bid 2.18 times more, non-institutional investors bid 0.43 times, small individual investors 0.16 times, and employees 0.44 times.