 "UB Holdings' stock on fire")
One trigger for this movement is UBHL’s bid to release some of the pledged shares of its group companies — United Spirits and Mangalore Chemicals & Fertilizers (MCF) — even as global spirits major Diageo opened its second offer from June 6 to mop up an additional 26 per cent in United Spirits at Rs 3,030 a share.
In the past few trading sessions, UBHL shares have gained 25 per cent. UBHL, which had pledged a part of its holdings in United Spirits as well as MCF to raise resources to fund its now-grounded Kingfisher Airlines, has over the past two weeks been slowly releasing a part of these. UBHL has released shares worth about Rs 150 crore of United Spirits and additional shares of MCF worth Rs 55 crore.
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According to information available, UBHL is trying to pay back some of its debtors from the proceeds of the sale of a part of its shares of USL to Diageo. As part of the Rs 5,500-crore transaction, sealed during July 2013, in which UBHL sold a part of its holding in United Spirits, there was an inflow of about Rs 2,000 crore into UBHL.
Bulk of this was paid to lenders to facilitate the share sale to Diageo.
“UBHL is continuing this process as it is managing to slowly untangle various issues with lenders,” a senior management official of UB Group told Business Standard. An official spokesperson offered no comment.
Despite these moves, Vijay Mallya might have to shortly work out ways on how he intends to square up against a possible over-arching move by Kingfisher Airlines’ lenders, who are mulling various options to get back the Rs 6,000-crore of dues, after many of their moves have so far failed.
RETURN OF GOOD TIMES
- Rs 49.80 Price per share of UB Holdings Limited on Tuesday
- 3.68 Tuesday’s volumes growth of UBHL
- 2.12% Value the firm gained over a day
- Rs 205 cr Total number of shares released by UBHL, comprising both United Spirits and MCF