Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) is again expected to come and rescue the struggling FPO of NMDC.

The fate of the NMDC offer, which is to be decided on Friday, will tell whether the largest insurer will have to underwrite the issue or not. And since the market has said that the FPO is overpriced, many of the FIIs have tried to stay away from it.

In such a case, unless and until something substantial happens, NMDC may have to face the same fate as the REC FPO.

Till now, said a government executive, LIC is the largest bidder for the issue.

As on Thursday, 33.2 crore NMDC shares were subscribed. This is 80 per cent of the total shares. In that too, bulk bidding was done by LIC.

FIIs, retailers and HNIs contributions were almost negligible. Mutual Funds, surprisingly, have not come forward for a single share.

However, as per the figures, the number of biddings done on the second day of the issue was better. But most of the trading was done by two state-owned companies.

The second was is the State Bank of India, which has bid for the stocks worth Rs. 5 billion.