Showing a bearish outlook for Indian stocks, the overseas investors’ holding in the domestic firms has fallen to a three-year low, even as promoters here are rapidly raising their stakes, a study said on Tuesday.
According to a shareholding analysis by global financial services major Citigroup’s equity research arm, foreign holdings in the top 500 firms listed on the BSE stood at 17.8 per cent in the first three months this year almost same as in June 2005.
FII holdings have fallen by nearly two percentage points in the January-March period from December quarter last year. The foreign holdings include ownership through financial institutions and by way of subscription to Indian firms’ American Depository R eceipts and Global Depository Receipts.
According to Citigroup Equity Research Analyst, Mr Aditya Narain, "Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have been the top sellers in the correction, bucking the trend of rising foreign ownership leading to market performance’’. Even as the drop in pub lic holding was a continuation of the downward trend since March 2001, fall in FII ownership was sharpest over the same period,’’ he said in the report.
The entire foreign portfolio in the BSE 500 stood at $265 billion in the quarter ended March 31, 2008, compared with $292 billion in the December 2007 quarter and shows a definite bias towards large-caps, the report stated.
In contrast, the promoter share of the BSE-500 companies has risen to 58.2 per cent at the end of March quarter, an increase of over two percentage points from the previous quarter, the report revealed, adding that the promoter holding are at the their h ighest level in 32 quarters. - PT
No comments:
Post a Comment