A not so Star(ry) IPO and Kotak leads race for Citi’s assets

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Editor's note: Hi, this is Ashwin here. We are late today because we were waiting for Star Health and Allied Insurance’s IPO to close. Alas, it looks like a long wait. But the message is clear. Just like Murphy's law, which famously states that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong,” the IPO too seems to have met the same fate. But who should really take the blame for an IPO that’s gone horribly wrong? In better news, Uday Kotak’s Kotak Mahindra Bank may firmly be in the lead to pick up Citibank’s retail assets in India. Read on.  Star Health’s damp squib Star Health’s IPO is struggling to go past the finish line in a showing that actually makes Paytm's public offer look better. The health insurer’s offer has been subscribed 0.8x times, or in other words, has fallen well short of the minimum 90% threshold. Even as we were writing this newsletter, the management and underwriters had extended the deadline in a last-ditch effort to convince high networth individuals to subscribe more and save the IPO. The third largest …