Vodafone Group is likely to file a draft prospectus for the planned IPO of its Indian business in August with the listing expected in the fourth quarter, in a deal seen raising as much as $2.5 billion, people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. The British telecoms group, India’s largest mobile operator after Bharti Airtel, has begun work on the prospectus that would incorporate the Indian unit’s financials for the first half of the calendar year, they said. Vodafone hired Bank of America Corp, India’s Kotak Investment Banking, UBS AG in April as global coordinators for the IPO, set to be India’s biggest stock market listing since 2010. A London-based Vodafone spokesman declined to comment on the timeline, saying the potential India IPO was a “lengthy process” and no decision would be made until the company was at the end of it. Sources declined to be identified as the information is not public.
