It's raining bonuses for shareholders

It has been raining bonuses for the share holders of India Inc. Between January and May this year, 50 companies have declared bonus issues compared with 24 in the first five months of calendar year 2005.

If the pace of bonus announcements continues, 2006 may witness record number of bonus issues in the last one decade.

In calendar year 2005, as many as 85 firms declared bonus issues "" a record in last ten years. Earlier in 1996, 101 companies had announced bonus issues.

"This is a sign of good times. We will not be surprised if more and more companies join the bandwagon when the economy is on a upswing," said the company secretary of a large manufacturing outfit.

The latest round of bonus issues will be declared by Larsen and Toubro, Gujarat NRE Coke, EIH, NESCO and Hercules Hoist over the next one week.

The Larsen and Tourbo board will meet on June 7 to declare the ratio of bonus shares. Ten years back in 1986 the company had issued bonus shares in the ratio of 3:5 (three bonus shares for every five equity shares held).

On Monday, the promoters of Nargarjuna Constructions declared bonus equity shares in the ratio of 1:1 (one bonus equity share for every one share held).

Unitech has been the most generous among corporates, declaring bonus shares in the ratio of 12:1 (12 bonus equity shares for every one equity share held).

Investment and Precision Castings declared bonus shares in the ratio of 3:1 (three bonus shares for every one share held) and Cipla and National Peroxide allotted bonus shares in the ratio of 3:2 (three bonus shares for every one share held).

TCS, Infosys Technologies, Satyam Computer Services, Cadila Healthcare, Mastek, Sterlite Industries, Kalpataru Power Transmission, Grindwell Norton, Atlas Copco and Anuh Pharma announce the bonus issues in the ratio of 1:1 (one bonus equity shares for every share held) in last four months.

Infotech Enterprises, IL&FS Ventures and Banswara Syntex declared bonus shares in the ratio of 1:2 (one bonus shares for every two shares held) to their equity shareholders.

Calendar year 1994 enjoys the distinction of announcing the highest number of bonus issues "" 159, followed by 126 in 1995.

In 1992, 112 firms declared the bonus issues and 1991 total 106 companies allotted bonus shares to their equity shareholders.