Sbi Caps Retains Lead In Issues

SBI Capital Markets maintained its top position in lead management of public issues during the last financial year, aggregating Rs 2,751 crore, says a study.

Followed by SBI Caps, Kotak Mahindra with Rs 2,558 crore improved to second from third position followed by J M Financial with Rs 2,539 crore, according to an analysis released here yesterday by PRIME Data Base. The other merchant bankers with major lead management of public issues included DSP Merill Lynch with Rs 2,419 crore and Enam Financial with Rs 2,241 crore.

Based on the number of issues handled, SBI Capital Markets remained on top with 10 issues, up from third rank in the previous year followed by Kotak Mahindra which improved from 16th to second with seven issues.

 

As lead managers of debt public issues, Kotak Mahindra led the table, both in terms of number of issues handled as also the amount mobilised.

They were followed by SBI Caps.However, PRIME Databases managing director Prithvi Haldea said the declining number of issues made merchant banking extremely competition bringing in the expected shakeout.

In 1997-98, of the total 435 "Category-one" merchant bankers, only 65 succeeded in securing the meagre 66 public issues which entered the market.

The PRIME Data Base study also said the number of active merchant bankers was also down to 65 from 234 in 1996-97 and even out of these as many as 41 handled only one issue each and another 11 only two issues each.

The underwriting business was also hit severely during 1997-98 with Rs 269 crore being underwritten compared with Rs 912 crore in 1997-98, the study said.

In managing rights issues ICICI-Securities (I-SEC) maintained its top rank being involved with issues aggregating Rs 1,038 crore followed by SBI Caps - up from 10th position, followed by IFCI Financial, IDBI and J M Financial, respectively.

There were a total of 50 rights issues aggregating Rs 1,741 crore in 1997-98.