JOHANNESBURG (Bloomberg) - Sasol Ltd., the oil company that helped shield the apartheid regime from sanctions, will sell $3.2 billion of shares to black investors in South Africa's largest redistribution of wealth since the end of white-minority rule.

Sasol, meeting a government target, will sell a 10 percent stake, equivalent to 19.7 percent of its South African business, the Johannesburg-based company said yesterday in a statement. The shares will be sold at an 11 percent discount to the March 18 closing price of 410 rand ($50.85).

The deal is twice the size of the previous record involving black investors, set 18 months ago by Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd. It will ease pressure on Sasol from the government, which is pushing companies from banks to gold producers to sell discounted stakes to black investors to help compensate for discrimination under apartheid, which ended in 1994.

"It's a very positive transaction for the company," said Abri du Plessis, who helps manage the equivalent of about $620 million at Gryphon Asset Management, including Sasol shares. "Costs will be carried by shareholders across the board."

Sasol rose 5.84 rand, or 1.5 percent, to 386 rand in Johannesburg trading, bringing its gains over the past year to 64 percent. That valued Sasol at 243.6 billion rand, the third- biggest of companies with headquarters in South Africa, after Anglo Platinum Ltd. and MTN Group Ltd.

"The deal satisfies government's objectives of broadening ownership," said Shoaib Vayej, head of resources at Sanlam Investment Management, which manages the equivalent of $65 billion in Cape Town. "It balances this with the requirement from shareholders to avoid too much dilution of their holdings."

Sasol said employees will get a four percent stake, with members of the public getting three percent. The Inzalo Foundation will have a 1.5 percent holding, with the same stake for broad-based black-investor groups, including those involved in community projects near the company's plants.

"We are giving South Africans the opportunity to get involved," said Sasol executive director Nolitha Fakude. President Thabo Mbeki's cabinet has backed the deal, she added.

Sasol will fund share purchases by employees and the foundation. The company will also finance 90 to 95 percent of buying by the general public, Sasol's chief financial officer Christine Ramon said in an interview.

"The man in the street is only required to put down a five percent deposit for the shares," Ms. Ramon said. Borrowings will be repaid using dividends and growth in Sasol's share price over the next 10 years, she added.

The stock covered by the deal cannot be traded for two years and over the subsequent eight years can only be sold to other black investors, Sasol said.

The total cost of the transaction will be about 7.2 billion rand, Ms. Ramon said.

"It's 2.8 percent of our market cap, which is in line with recently concluded black empowerment transactions," Ms. Ramon said. Of the total cost to existing shareholders, 3.3 billion rand will be charged this year, with the balance "expensed" over 10 years, she added.

Sasol has appointed three black executives to its board over the past two-and-a-half years in an effort to deflect criticism from the government that it was not doing enough to redress the wrongs of apartheid.

That criticism intensified after Sasol's board named Pat Davies, a white South African, as its chief executive in July 2005. The company, a former state-owned company established by the apartheid government in the 1950s to safeguard South Africa's energy needs, said in 2003 that boosting black ownership presented risks for shareholders.

Sasol operates two so-called synthetic fuel plants, which transform coal and gas into oil products and chemicals, in South Africa and is considering building a third. It is also the country's third-biggest coal producer, after BHP Billiton Ltd. and Anglo American plc.

The company operates the Oryx gas-to-fuel plant in Qatar, is building another in Nigeria and is considering locations for further plants. It also imports gas into South Africa from fields it runs in neighboring Mozambique.

Sasol on March 10 reported a 15 percent jump in first-half profit to 9.15 billion rand.