Fifth year of zero SME rights issues likely after Rs 100 cr mop up in 2014

Year 2017 first with nil funds raised; experts say easier routes of raising capital such as QIP driving down popularity of rights

Smaller companies are no longer coming back to shareholders to raise additional money through rights issues.

The number of such issuances in the small and medium enterprise (SME) segment of stock exchanges is set to end at zero for the fifth year in a row, shows a Business Standard analysis of numbers from tracker Prime Database. A rights issue is when a company offers additional shares to existing investors at a discount to raise money. Companies in the SME segment had raised over Rs 100 crore through this route since 2014-the earliest since data is available. The peak was when,