Zee Entertainment shares bounce back; end nearly 17 pc higher

Shares of Zee Entertainment Enterprises bounced back Monday and ended with a sharp gain of nearly 17 per cent after it denied links with a company being probed for suspicious demonetisation deposits.

The stock zoomed 16.64 per cent to end at Rs 372.50 on BSE. Intra-day, it surged 19.24 per cent to Rs 380.80.

At NSE, shares of the company jumped 15.73 per cent to close at Rs 368.50.

Shares of Dish TV also bounced back after morning selling pressure and ended at Rs 23.85, up 5.53 per cent on BSE.

Subhash Chandra-promoted two Essel group companies Zee Entertainment Enterprises and Dish TV Sunday denied links with Nityank lnfrapower and Multiventures Ltd, a company being probed by the SFIO for suspicious demonetisation deposits, as claimed in a media report.

Shares of other Zee group companies however, continued to face selling pressure Monday also, with Zee Media Corporation plunging 19.68 per cent and Zee Learn tanking 7.80 per cent at close of trade on BSE.

On January 25, shares of ZEE group companies had come under massive selling pressure, plummeting up to 33 per cent, and suffered a combined erosion of Rs 13,352 crore in market valuation.

Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL), in a regulatory filing, said Nityank lnfrapower and Multiventures is an "independent company and does not belong to Essel Group".

Its DTH arm Dish TV has also denied any transaction with Nityank in its scheme of merger of Videocon D2H with the company.

On Friday, Essel Group chairman Subhash Chandra apologised to lenders and said his company is in a financial mess and blamed the same for the aggressive bets on infrastructure, which has gone out of control since the IL&FS crisis and also the acquisition of Videocon's D2H business.

Promoters of the Essel Group had a detailed meeting with lending entities comprising mutual funds, non banking financial companies (NBFCs) and banks, in which it was decided that there would not be any event of "default declared due to the steep fall in price", the Essel Group said in a statement Sunday.