BANGALORE: Good news for retail investors! A 10 per cent reservation will be provided to them by listed companies in an offer for sale (OFS) and it is estimated that they might get a discount by the respective entity selling shares, revealed in a report by Business Standard.

As per a proposal specified by the Securities and Exchange Board of India, the non promoter share holders can sell their shares if they have a stake more than 10 per cent through OFS.

The offer-for-sale route is a prominent advancement for the promoters as it involves least amount of paperwork and it is very less time consuming. It is well established that over 100 companies have sold their shares via OFS up till now.

It is remarkable that since 2012,  48,457 crore of shares  have been sold out to listed companies through OFS  route which include Wipro, Reliance Power, Blue Dart, Adani Power, Mahindra Holidays, ONGC Eros International, Sun TV and many are into the pipeline.

Introduction of OFS in Indian economy was to help listed private sectors in accordance with the minimum of 25 percent public shareholding norm and state owned firms to cover the basic 10 percent public float.

 Head of a brokerage house said: "It was a faster route because many private and public sector companies had to meet the July 2013 deadline and retail investors ended on the losing side because they had no role to play. OFS was a big boys' club."

 Thus SEBI board consented to reserve a minimum 10 percent of the issue size in OFS for retail investors while the scrutiny remained unbiased to other investors, in case the portion was not fully purchased.