Malaysia's biggest mobile service provider, Maxis Bhd is going for country's biggest Initial Public Offering in a bid to raise as much as $3.65 billion. The firm will sell 30 per cent of its existing share capital in the IPO despite rather subdued market conditions.

The offer would include an institutional tranche of 2.037 billion shares and a retail portion of 212.3 million shares. A one third of the offering would be set aside for cornerstone investors on the condition of a six-month lock-up period.

The mobile operator is learnt to have set price range of 4.80 ringgit to 5.50 ringgit a share for the proposed offering. It wants to use improving market conditions for raising funds without caring IPO scraping plans by some companies including South Korea's POSCO Engineering & Construction which has cancelled its $926 million offering after sensing poor response of book buildings.

Kevin Low, analyst at Kuala Lumpur-based Affin Investment Bank, said, "Positioned as a matured yield play, we expect an active capital management theme to be the primary investment thesis for the stock."