The country's top private sector lender, ICICI Bank, made its entry into the list of the top-10 most valuable companies by market capitalisation this week, helped by a sharp rise in banking stocks.
With a market capitalisation (m-cap) of 1,28,016 crore, ICICI Bank now features at tenth rank in the list, knocking state-run BHEL out of the prestigious club. During the past week, ICICI Bank added Rs 10,809.4 crore to its m-cap.
Analysts said a sharp rise in financial stocks during the past week pushed up the m-cap of most banks.
"Banks led from the front on optimism that lending will pick up in a fast-growing Indian economy and that they are well capitalised," a broker said.
Though the rush for banking stocks helped ICICI Bank make an entry into the top-10 club, its rival, HDFC Bank, is still lagging behind and is ranked at thirteenth, whereas mortgage lender HDFC is seventeenth in terms of market capitalisation.
The past week was fabulous for equity investors and the shareholders of nine of the top-10 companies became richer by a whopping Rs 72,810.43 crore.
Except MMTC, all the top-10 companies saw value addition, with the maximum contribution coming in from corporate leader Reliance Industries Ltd.
Enjoying the numero-uno position, RIL saw the addition of Rs 22,509.77 crore to its m-cap during the past week. At the end of trade on Friday, the Mukesh Ambani-led energy giant was valued at Rs 3,35,928.98 crore. During the week, RIL's shares rose by 7.1 per cent to regain the Rs 1,000-level for the first time in over a month.
State-run ONGC continues to hold on to the second position, while SBI was third and TCS fourth. Infosys was at fifth, NTPC at sixth, MMTC at the seventh, Bharti Airtel at eight and ITC at ninth.
Oil and gas major ONGC added Rs 9,207.84 crore to its kitty to take its m-cap to Rs 2,99,142.36 crore, while public sector lender SBI saw its valuation swell by Rs 7,080.14 crore to Rs 1,96,465.91 crore.
IT giants TCS and Infosys Technologies together added Rs 12,698.12 crore to their combined m-cap. The valuation of these two companies stood at Rs 1,78,584 crore and Rs 1,70,683 crore, respectively.
Power major NTPC enlarged its valuation by Rs 2,968.37 crore to Rs 1,69,815.25 crore, but trading firm MMTC saw its m-cap eroded by Rs 3,285 crore to Rs 1,36,930 crore.
The country's top telco, Bharti Airtel, added Rs 3,170.93 crore to take its m-cap to Rs 1,35,913.24 crore, while FMCG major ITC saw its valuation expand by Rs 4,365.86 crore to Rs 1,28,907.7 crore.
During the week, the BSE benchmark Sensex recorded a gain of 4.2 per cent and ended at 19,594.75 -- its best close since January 17, 2008.