RIL shines in a depressed market

The Sensex is now quoting at 16744, lower by 241 points and the Nifty is at 5012, down 78 points

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(Updated at 1441pm)

Our markets have been resilient to the weakness that has gripped the global indices. While the Wall Street shed more than 3% and the Asian indices lost anywhere between 2% and 3% each, our markets have not fallen as much. Thanks to the gains in index heavyweight RIL, the Sensex is now quoting at 16800, lower by 188 points and the Nifty is at 5022, down 66 points.  

A three-member Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan, ruled in favour of RIL by 2:1. Supreme Court judge P Sathasivam declared that the brothers' memorandum of understanding (MoU) was not binding and the Production Sharing Contract (PSC) will override all the prior agreements. The court also emphasised that the government owned all the gas assets till they reached the users and directed both RIL and RNRL to renegotiate in six weeks.

Reliance Industries is the leading gainer on the BSE. The index heavyweight is off its intra-day high of Rs 1060, but is still up 2.9% at Rs 1041. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till the previous day, falling 9.83% compared with the Sensex's fall of 5.32%.

On the other hand, the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group (ADAG) stocks have slumped after the verdict. Reliance Natural Resources has plunged 21% to Rs 53. Reliance Power fell 8.7% at Rs 140 and Reliance Infrastructure declined 6.4% to Rs 985.

Among the other major losers, Tata Motors has weakened by 4.5% at Rs 777 and DLF has lost 3% at Rs 289.

The market breadth continues to move negative, out of 2,840 shares traded on the BSE, 2,315 have declined and 475 have advanced so far on the BSE.