YES Bank rallies 25% despite exit of key official, pledged share sale

NEW DELHI: Shares of YES Bank rallied over 25 per cent in Thursday’s trade as investors thought the promoter share sale overhang on the stock is over.


Following the recent invocation of pledged shares by lenders and offloading of stake by various promoter entities, co-promoter Rana Kapoor’s stake in the bank has slipped below 1 per cent.


On Tuesday, a PTI report claimed Reliance Nippon Asset Management Company had also directed its trustees to sell the remaining shares pledged by Rana Kapoor as a collateral. In a filing to BSE on Wednesday, the bank said Milestone Trusteeship Services invoked shares pledged with it, following which the entire pledge stood extinguished.

But the scrip climbed 25 per cent to hit a high of Rs 39.80 on BSE on Thursday.

Promoter group entities Morgan Credits (MCPL) and Yes Capital (YCPL) sold the bank’s shares at deeply discounted prices with a sole aim of deleverage the promoter entities, YES Bank said in a BSE filing.

“We are highly dejected that our family shareholding in YES Bank was sold at such dismal price levels, despite the bank having created long-term shareholder value and over 20,000 jobs during last 15 years. We will continue to focus our energies on growing the startup ventures incubated by us,” the bank statement read.

In a conference call earlier in the day, YES Bank said Rajat Monga has decided to ‘move on’ from the bank. He was serving as senior group president since its inception in 2004.

The news came two weeks after Monga sold YES Bank shares on September 18 and September 19, insider data available with BSE suggested.

The bank said it continued to remain fundamentally strong, and that the recent dumping of shares by key managerial personnel and employees was due to ‘personal reasons'.

It said the bank’s operating performance and current sentiments are showing divergent trends.

On Wednesday, the bank had said its liquidity coverage ratio was in excess of 125 per cent as on September 30, which was well above the minimum regulatory requirement of 100 per cent.

Gross advances, it said, aggregated to Rs 2.32 lakh crore at the end of September quarter against Rs 2.42 lakh crore reported for the June quarter with a higher share of retail advances.

“The reduction in advances was effected to enhance capital efficiency,” it said.

Further, deposits aggregated to Rs 2.09 lakh crore as of September 30. Casa ratio, it said, improved to 30.8 per cent from 30.2 per cent as of June 30.