FIIs, funds raise holding in RIL

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) as well as domestic mutual funds have increased their holdings in Reliance Industries in the quarter ending September 30, 2006.

Their stakes, however, in the other pockets of the oil and gas sector, such as pure refiners, oil marketing companies and upstream player Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, have remained virtually unchanged.

The FII holding in Reliance Industries was 21.1 per cent in the second quarter of the current financial year, half a percentage point up from 20.6 per cent in the first quarter.

Interestingly, mutual funds' holding in the company, during the same period, has gone up only by a marginal 20 basis points. (One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point).

MFs' aggregate holding in the company rose to 2.62 per cent in the September 2006 quarter, from 2.4 per cent in the previous quarter.

During the quarter, RIL's operating profit grew by 23 per cent to Rs 4,565 crore year-on-year on the back of 37.4 per cent growth in net turnover to Rs 28,474 crore. The company's sales grew largely due to improved performance of the petrochemicals division.