West Bengal-focused Great Eastern Energy plans to float up to 92.6 million shares on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The AIM-quoted company has not yet specified how much it hopes to raise or at what price it will pitch the float, but it wishes to accelerate its projects to produce coal bed methane gas from a 210 sq km licence in West Bengal’s Raniganj coalfields.

Great Eastern’s tightly held shares now trade at 272.5p, at which price the India issue would be worth more than £250 million, but the actual terms will depend on the book building exercise now being carried out by ABN Amro Securities, Enam Securities and DSP Merrill Lynch.

India-based Great Eastern, whose shares rose from 2005’s 101p float to 330p last June before easing to 272.5p, proposes to issue 46.3 million new shares in the Indian float. The other 46.3 million will be sold by existing shareholders in the company, where chairman and managing director Yogendra Modi now holds some 64
per cent.

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