The initial public offering (IPO) of Life Insurance Corporation of India closed for subscription on Monday, garnering demand of over

Rs 45,000 crore. The issue was subscribed 2.95 times, with policyholders and employees leading the queue.

The offer received bids for 47.8 crore shares against 16.2 crore shares on offer, excluding the quota of anchor investors.

The IPO is through an offer-for-sale (OFS) of up to 22.1 crore equity shares. This means the government raised around Rs 21,000 crore at the upper end of the price band of Rs 949 per share.

An interesting highlight was the strong response shown by policyholders who single-handedly subscribed to six times the issue size. They were followed by employees, and the portion reserved for this segment was subscribed 4.40 times.

Though the retail category began well when the IPO opened for subscription on May4, at close the portion was subscribed a modest 1.99 times. This came even as the portion was fully subscribed last Friday itself and they had two additional days of Saturday and Sunday to invest.

The non-institutional category witnessed subscription of 2.91 times and qualified institutional buyers, 2.83 times.