Hitting A Plateau

The stock market indices remained flat on Friday in the absence of any encouraging developments. It seems that the bourses have become immune to any kind of external forces.

Offer under a cloud

The Securities and Exchange Board of India is learnt to be looking into banning Sterlite Industries' buy-back offer opening on Monday. The legal department of the market watchdog is currently weighing whether the ban on Sterlite from accessing the capital markets in connection with the alleged price-rigging in 1998 in BPL, Sterlite and Videocon can be extended to the open offer.

Rumour boost

Rumours are that Cap-it-all has been a consistent seller at the Castrol counter. It is said to have been holding around 39 lakh shares at the end of the last calendar year. It has sold around four lakh shares on Thursday. The Castrol share has been up recently on the back of a court decision which dismissed an appeal of BP Amoco against the pricing of the Castrol open offer. Castrol was seeing upsides on talks that the offer may be announced soon and the price would contain its interest as well. However, there are talks that Cap-it-all, which now has around 20 lakh shares, will continue to be a seller.

 

On a roll

Indications are that over 2.9 lakh shares of Balaji Telefilms changed hands on Friday. Currently there seems to be external factors at play for the stock because it is surprising that volumes are more than the floating stock.

Miscellaneous deals

The Kolkata-based Krishna Dalmia is reported to have bought a whopping nine lakh shares of ITW Signode on Thursday. The parent of ITW Signode has announced a buy-back of shares at Rs 80 per share and has declared dividend of Rs 2 per share. Temple Fund is said to have sold 2 lakh shares of MTNL, while the King Kong Brokerage is reported to have sold 1 lakh shares of Hero Honda on the same day.

Back seat driving

The market was agog with rumours that the high flying lady of the stock markets, who is termed as "the widow of a premiere stock exchange" (because she has sold off her card and sustains her position as partner in her husband's business), has been suspended from the panel of approved brokers by all the mutual funds smelling foul in her dealings.