Vedanta surges 8% after promoters buy additional stake via open market

Shares of Vedanta surged 8 per cent to Rs 162.60 on the BSE in Thursday's early morning trade after over 200 million, or 6 per cent of the total equity of the aluminium company, changed hands via block deals on the BSE and NSE, the exchange data shows. With today’s gain, the stock has rallied 17 per cent in the past two trading days.

At 09:15 am, around 111 million shares, or 3 per cent stake, changed hands on the BSE, and around 100 million shares, or 3 per cent stake, changed hands on the NSE, the exchanges data shows.

Till 09:23 am, a combined 251 million equity shares, representing 7 per cent of total equity of Vedanta, had changed hands on the NSE and BSE. The name of buyers and sellers were not ascertained immediately.

Reports on Wednesday said that the Vedanta promoters will launch an offer to buy 185 million shares of Vedanta i.e. about 4.9 per cent stake of total equity through block deal. The promoters have fixed the price range between Rs 150 and Rs 160 per share for the offer. With this transaction, promoter’s stake in the company will likely to increase from 50.14 per cent to 55.04 per cent.

The increase in stake comes after Vedanta Resources, the company's promoter, failed in its attempt to delist Vedanta Limited in October as it did not get bids for a sufficient quantity of shares. A total of 1,254.7 million shares were tendered by shareholders, against 1,697.3 million shares sought by promoters.

An increase in stake could make it a bit easier for the promoters to delist the company after the mandatory one year cooling off period gets over, the Business Standard reported. CLICK HERE TO READ FULL REPORT