Tatas and Ambanis may be known for being among the country's wealthiest groups, but it takes as many as ten of them to match the stock market wealth of the conglomerate comprising of various government companies.
The combined market valuation of all listed government entities has grown to close to Rs 20,00,000 crore, as per an analysis of data available with the two bourses, BSE and NSE.
In comparison, all the companies belonging to the country's 10 most valued private business groups together command a cumulative market valuation of this magnitude.
This makes the group of the government companies the most valued conglomerate in the country with a size over four times of the most valued private business house Tatas.
Among the private corporate groups, the Ratan Tata-led salt-to-software conglomerate is currently the largest with a market wealth of Rs 4,47,351 crore, followed by Mukesh Ambani- led Reliance group at Rs 283,000 crore, Deepak Parekh-led HDFC group (Rs 221,000 crore) and Infosys (Rs 168,500 crore).
These are followed by tobacco-to-FMCG conglomerate ITC (Rs 156,000 crore), retail-to-telecom giant Bharti group (Rs 145,600 crore), Anil Agarwal-led Vedanta group (Rs 141,200 crore), Adani Group (Rs 137,400 crore), ICICI Bank (Rs 126,00 crore) and Aditya Birla group (Rs 117,500 crore).
Together, these ten most valued private business houses command a cumulative stock market valuation of Rs 19,43,000 crore, based on the value of all their 60 listed entities.
In comparison, there are close to 100 listed government entities in the country, including 50 central public sector enterprises and 28 public sector banks, while the rest are state-level public sector companies and the companies promoted by various PSUs.
There are more than 100 other unlisted public sector companies, including behemoths like BSNL and Air India.
The combined market valuation of the 100 listed companies have grown to Rs 19,35,000 crore as on July 1, 2011, which is only a shade below the cumulative figure for 10 largest private sector business houses.
It is the strong investor appetite for public sector companies that makes them such a strong group and this is evident from close to Rs 1,00,000 crore garnered by the government through disinvestment in various PSUs.
The government has set a disinvestment target of Rs 40,000 crore for the current fiscal also, while it aims to garner Rs 95,000 crore in three financial years.
Experts said that the government companies have always remained a good investment proposition for investors, barring a few exceptions, while the private companies, despite belonging to large groups, generally pass through both good and bad phases.
