The public share offer by Reliance Power has broken many benchmarks and set many records. The success of the issue is guaranteed by the rush of applicants. A grey market for the company's stock appears to offer the prospect of substantial price appreciation on the day of listing -- which would explain the rush.
And it goes without saying that it is a feather in the promoters' cap that the largest public share issue in India's history should be such a successful one.
Along the way, it straightaway establishes Reliance Power as one of the country's most valuable companies, and for all one knows it may establish a new round in fraternal competition -- that Anil Ambani's wealth has surpassed that of his brother, Mukesh.
Having conceded all this, there are several aspects of the issue that leave many observers feeling distinctly uneasy. Here is a company that has no assets on the ground, and no history of project execution, getting a value on the market that is many times higher than established and successful companies in the same field of business, namely power generation.
The many risks associated with investing in such a company have been listed in the issue documents, including the uncertainties surrounding some of its projects -- like the lack of assured fuel supply. But investors (including institutional investors who are professionals and who therefore should know what they are doing) have not been deterred; it would seem that everyone wants a piece of the action, in the hope of immediate returns.
Most brokers and analysts concede that the issue is very aggressively priced, and out of line with valuations in the power sector, but at the same time they point to the fact that the Reliance group has traditionally been investor-friendly and therefore give "buy" recommendations with varying riders, and sometimes with no riders at all.
On top of everything else, there is the spectacle of the finance minister commenting on the issue as a matter of global confidence in the India story!
The stock market has a long history of promoters seeking to cash in on a bull market, when judgments about the risk-reward ratio have got skewed by a heady sense that there is easy money to be made.
The history of the share issues of 2007, almost all of which gave their subscribers instant returns on listing, has now encouraged many people to believe that 2008 will bring more such opportunities.
Yet, all too often in such boom times, retail investors get their fingers burnt -- readers will recall the slew of companies that took money from the public at the height of the Internet boom, only for many of them to disappear without trace shortly afterwards. That is not the risk when it comes to a company like Reliance Power, but is this a case of people voting for the verity of the bull market assertion that "Greed is good"?
The odd thing is that all the rules governing stock market activity, including full disclosure and free pricing, are not able to prevent something that any rational observer will say is over the top.
The only operative phrase seems to be caveat emptor (buyer beware). That is unobjectionable, and no one will complain -- until the chickens come home to roost.
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