The Cabinet has approved the sale of a controlling stake to Prem Watsa’s Fairfax for ₹52,878 crore. It is the largest foreign investment in an Indian bank and the closest thing India has had to a real bank privatisation in decades.
India’s longest-running bank sale is almost over.
On Wednesday, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the sale of 60.72% of IDBI Bank Ltd. to 10955230 Canada Inc., a unit of Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., for ₹52,878 crore. The government will sell 30.48%. Life Insurance Corp. of India will sell 30.24%. Once the deal closes, the government will keep 15% and LIC 19%.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was careful with her words. She called it a strategic restructuring, not a disinvestment, because both state owners will stay on as shareholders. The label matters in politics. The economics are simpler. Control of a mid-sized Indian bank is passing to a foreign private investor.
The backstory
The Cabinet gave in-principle approval back in May 2021. Then came years of regulatory checks on bidders. In March 2026, the process was suspended after bids came in below the government’s reserve price. It looked, for a while, like another privatisation that would quietly die.
Fairfax came back. Its revised offer, reported at ₹81 a share, up from ₹75, cleared the bar. The deal now overtakes Emirates NBD’s $2.75 billion purchase of 60% of RBL Bank in 2025 as the largest foreign investment in an Indian bank.
The turnaround behind it is genuinely striking. In September 2018, IDBI’s gross bad loans were 31.78% of its book, among the worst figures in Indian banking. LIC bought 51% in 2019 for ₹21,624 crore, largely as a rescue. By March 2026, gross bad loans had fallen to 2.32%. The state is not offloading a broken bank. It is selling a repaired one.
What it means
For minority investors, everything comes back to price.
When reports of the ₹81 offer first surfaced in September, IDBI shares dropped 10.6% in a single session to about ₹81. The market had hoped for a richer bid and was disappointed. Since then, the stock has largely settled around the deal price.
Fairfax will have to make an open offer to public shareholders. Its price and size will be set under takeover rules, and it could give minority investors a clean exit. Until the terms are published, expect the stock to hug the deal level.
LIC is a quiet winner here. It was pushed into IDBI to save it. It now walks away with a profitable exit and capital it can deploy elsewhere. The government adds a significant sum to this year’s asset-sale target.
The loose ends
Two remain, and neither is trivial.
First, the Reserve Bank of India must still complete its fit-and-proper checks on Fairfax as the new owner, and the deal needs clearance from the Competition Commission of India.
Second, there is CSB Bank. Fairfax already owns about 40% of the former Catholic Syrian Bank, and RBI rules generally do not allow one promoter to control two banks. Fairfax has said IDBI will be its main banking investment in India, so it is expected to either sell its CSB stake or merge the two lenders.
Reports suggest it may get up to two years to sort it out. Fairfax has also talked about folding some of its other Indian financial businesses, including insurer Go Digit, into IDBI as subsidiaries, which would turn the bank into the hub of Prem Watsa’s Indian financial empire.
Beyond IDBI
For years, India’s government has talked about selling state-owned banks. Very little has happened. Unions resisted, valuations disappointed, politics intervened.
If IDBI’s sale closes smoothly, it becomes the template. It shows that a foreign buyer can take control of an Indian bank, that the government can retain a minority stake for political cover, and that the process, while painfully slow, can work.
The next privatisation candidate will be watching closely. So will every investor who has bought a public-sector bank stock on the hope that, one day, the government might actually let go.
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