ETMarkets After Hours: Bleeding PSU banks, a slow-moving IPO & PNB's pain

NEW DELHI: The bears once again emerged victorious in Wednesday’s session, as the headline indices ended in the red.

The S&P BSE Sensex lost 144.52 points, or 0.42 per cent, during Wednesday’s session to close at 34,155, while the broader Nifty50 index of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) shed 39 points to end at 10,500, with 36 constituents ending in the red and 14 in the green.

The market breadth was in favour of declines, while the advance-decline ratio stood at 1:1.


Here’s a look at the top newsmakers of Dalal Street:

Shady transactions spook PNB
Shares of Punjab National Bank (PNB) plunged nearly 10 per cent after the state-run lender said it had detected some ‘fraudulent and unauthorised’ transactions worth about $1.77 billion at one of its branches in Mumbai. Reacting to the news, Banking Secretary Rajiv Kumar said the case was an isolated one that dated back to 2011. Ten employees of the bank have been suspended, and CBI has begun a probe. The stock settled at Rs 145.80 apiece on BSE.

PSB shares slide
State-run lenders took the hardest hit, reacting to the Reserve Bank of India’s move to scrap various loan restructuring programmes that may entail higher provisioning expenses, and subsequently, hit profits in FY2019. The Nifty PSU Bank index slumped 4.78 per cent to settle at 3,307 with all the 12 constituents ending in the red.

Spurt in open interest
Punjab National Bank witnessed the biggest spike in open interest at 50.95 per cent, followed by Bank of India (up 31.44 per cent) and Oriental Bank of Commerce (29.98 per cent).

TWEET OF THE DAY

How can a man with a suspect business model and hardly any finances to show for get such huge financing from PSU Banks. #NiravModi and the RS 11000 Cr issue.
Contacts have run very high,very high for such a scam.

— sandip sabharwal (@sandipsabharwal) February 14, 2018

NCC jumps post Q3 nos
Shares of NCC (Nagarjuna Construction Company) swelled as much as 10 per cent after the company posted a solid 72 per cent rise in its Q3 net profit at Rs 100.36 crore against Rs 58.27 crore in the corresponding quarter previous fiscal. The stock, eventually, closed at Rs 126.50 apiece, up 6.75 per cent.

Aster IPO moves at snail’s pace
The initial public offering (IPO) by healthcare services provider Aster DM Healthcare was subscribed 39 per cent on Day 2 of the bidding process. The price band of the company has been fixed at Rs 180–190 per share with a face value of Rs 10 each. Till the time of writing of this report, the issue got 1,46,74,140 subscriptions as against the issue size of 3,73,70,415 shares, according to NSE data. The offer will close on Thursday, February 14.

Bharti Airtel rises
Shares of telecom major rose nearly 2 per cent after reports surfaced that the board of directors of Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands) BV (BAIN), its subsdiary, was mulling a possible overseas listing. Shares of the company settled at Rs 431.50 apiece, up 1.76 per cent on BSE.