The London-listed mining conglomerate is also open to the idea of having another investor with a large number of shares in the two companies, provided that they are acquired through the proposed auction route, Vedanta chairman Anil Agarwal told PTI.
"I am open to the idea. It will be pleasure to have the stock (remaining shares of Hindustan Zinc and Balco) but even if government goes to the stock market and some body is there to acquire the shares, it is fine and that is how it should be," he said.
"If I can acquire 15 per cent or 5 per cent, that's fine, 2 per cent is fine, wholesome is fine," he said, adding that he and his officials have been talki ng to the government consistently and have held 2-3 meetings in last few months on the matter."
"They are in process but I don't know what the process is. We had two or three meetings and they have conveyed that they are looking seriously to divest these stocks (shares of Hindustan Zinc and Balco)," he said.
"Whenever they are ready, we are ready to talk and we are ready to give right price," he added.
Meanwhile, Mines Minister Dinsha Patel said that his department is not in a tearing hurry and would send the requisite report to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) on the matter after going through all pros and cons minutely.
"The PMO has asked us to prepare the report. We have to discuss with the Law Department. We already have two rounds of meeting. We will try to send the report to the PMO as soon as possible," Mr Patel said.
The government has set an ambitious target of raising Rs 55,000 crore in the current fiscal year (FY14) through disinvest ing shares in public sector companies PSUs. This includes Rs 15,000 crore from residual stake sale in some companies, including Hindustan Zinc and Balco.
Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram recently said that there is "no legal impediment" in divesting residual stakes of Hindustan Zinc and Balco.
Attorney General G E Vahanvati, in his opinion given recently, had said that the government can divest its shares in the two firms by selling them in the open market, but the prevailing price should be considered "fair".
The government had sold majority stakes in both, Hindustan Zinc and Bharat Aluminium Company (Balco) to Vedanta's subsidiary Sterlite Industries (now Sesa Sterlite) during 2001-2003. Now it holds residual stake of 29.5 per cent in Hindustan Zinc and 49 per cent in Balco.
According to the Vedanta chief, divestment of residual stakes in Hindustan Zinc and Balco has been promised by the government long back and it is "housekeeping" which n ow needs to be done.
"The housekeeping is housekeeping, government has said that they are not going to own the share. They have to divest, whether they divest to us, which will be pleasurable or if they were to divest through the stock market but as housekeeping, they have to do it. We are there to support anything what we can do," Mr Agarwal said.
In January 2012, Vedanta Resources had offered Rs 17,275 crore for buying out the remaining stake of the government in Hindustan Zinc and Balco.
It also took shareholders' approval in August last year to sweeten the offer by up to 25 per cent to Rs 21,635 crore. However, the permission has now expired as the company did not seek renewal of the one year approval this year due to stalled talks and lack of clarity.
At present, Hindustan Zinc is the richest profit-making subsidiary of Vedanta with a cash and cash equivalent of Rs 22,365 crore as on June 2013. The company had reported a net profit of Rs 6,899 cr ore and revenues of 12,526 crore in 2012-13.
Similarly, Balco - an unlisted company - had produced about 2,47,000 tonnes of Aluminium and had about 18 per cent market share by production volume in the country in 2012-13.
It had reported a gross revenue of Rs 3,426 crore and profit after tax of Rs 37 crore during the last fiscal year.
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