Coal India Fixes September 9 as Record Date for Share Buyback  

State-owned Coal India on Monday said it has fixed September 9 as the record date for buyback of its shares.

The country’s leading miner had last week announced that its shareholders have approved buyback of 10.89 crore shares at a price of Rs 335 apiece, aggregating to Rs 3,650 crore.

“The buyback Committee of the Board of Directors...has approved September 9, 2016 as record date for buyback of shares of CIL to determine the entitlement of equity shareholders in the buyback, the shareholders who would be eligible to participate in the buy-back and the shareholders to whom the letter of offer...will be delivered in relation to the buy-back,” Coal India said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Shares of Coal India closed marginally up at Rs 333.85 apiece on BSE.

The Finance Ministry is pushing for buyback of shares by Central Public Sector Enterprises. This is being done for two purposes — to generate cash for the government and help push up the valuation for any divestment.

The government has set a disinvestment target of Rs 56,500 crore for 2016-17. Of this, Rs 36,000 crore is expected to come from minority stake sales.

The Centre also needs to bring down its stake in CIL below 75 percent to adhere to market regulator SEBI’s norms. The deadline for ensuring this is August 2017.