Midcaps beaten by FIIs

Mid-cap companies saw heavy selling during the last fifteen days with prominent foreign institutional investors being the major sellers. Bear Stearns arm BSMA Ltd itself offloaded securities worth more than Rs 2,000 crore from the mid-cap Indian companies last 15 days, most of which belong in the BSE-500 index.

Top US investment banking firm Merrill Lynch, which was among the first to announce write downs as sub-prime related losses, has pulled out from Indiabulls Real Estate (15.15 lakh shares at Rs 495.05), Jain Irrigation (22.86 lakh shares at Rs 634), Jai Corp Ltd (26.57 lakh shares at Rs 660), and Arshiya International through bulk deals that it reported between March 11 and March 18.Morgan Stanley also sold off IPCA Lab Ltd shares.

Citigroup has offloaded 25 lakh shares of Ruchi Soya, which was bought by Reliance Mutual Fund’s new scheme Reliance Natural Resources Fund at Rs 87.50 per shares. Citi also sold off a large number of shares of Country Club at Rs 624.60, while Morgan Stanley offloaded 82,901 shares of Country Club at Rs 600. (Both these bulk deals were reported on March 10).

Deutsche Securities has sold off in Bang Overseas shares in two big lots reported on March 10 and March 11.

Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd shares numbering more than 38.85 lakhs were sold by Goldman Sachs at Rs 631.5 as reported on March 13.

Lehman Brothers has sold Voltamp Transformers shares, while Macquarie Bank sold off shares of Orchid Chemicals following the company’s reported exposure to foreign exchange derivatives in the overseas market.

HSBC Financial Services Middle East offloaded 2.92 lakh shares of Gruh Finance at Rs 137.50.

FIIs have offloaded about $3.5 billion worth of shares from the Indian market since January 2008 so far. During March so far, they have offloaded $662 million, according to SEBI data.

Source:Businessline(25th March 08)