Canadian pension funds buy India Kotak Mahindra bank stake worth $338 million

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Canada's two largest pension funds have bought a stake of about 1.5 percent in India's Kotak Mahindra Bank for about 22.55 billion rupees ($338 million) from its founder and chief executive Uday Kotak, stock exchange data showed on Wednesday.

Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ), Canada's second-biggest public pension fund, bought 18.4 million shares in the bank in a block deal at 817 rupees apiece, data from the BSE stock exchange showed.

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), the country's biggest pension plan, bought another 9.2 million shares at 817 rupees each, the data showed. CPPIB already owned a 5.76 percent stake in Kotak Mahindra, India's fourth-biggest private sector lender by assets, as of the end of December.

The stake sale comes after India's central bank asked the bank's founders led by Uday Kotak to lower their shareholding to 30 percent by end-June. The founder group owned 33.61 percent of the bank at the end of last year.

The bank founders are required to further lower their ownership to 20 percent by December next year and to 15 percent by March 2020.

(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Keith Weir)