FIIs picked up 5.82 crore banking sector shares in Dec quarter

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought an additional 5.82 crore equity shares of public and private sector banks during the quarter ended December, 2003.

They increased their stakes in Andhra Bank, Bank of India, Canara Bank, Corporation Bank, ICICI Bank, ING Vysya Bank and Karnataka Bank, among others, during the quarter, according to data on shareholding patterns filed by these banks with the exchanges.

So far 13 public and private banks have filed this information with the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). FIIs increased their holding in all these banks except in Dena Bank in which they did not hold any stake till September 2003.

Major FII buying was seen in ICICI Bank, where they increased their stake by two crore shares. This led to the FII stake in the bank rising from 42.12 per cent in September 2003 to 45.25 per cent at the end of December 2003.

Allamanda Investments PTE Ltd , HWIC Asia Fund Class A Shares and Merrill Lynch Capital Markets Espana SA SVB are the major FIIs which bought ICICI Bank shares during the quarter.

Allamanda Investments holds 5.75 per cent, HWIC Asia Fund Class A Shares 3.89 per cent and HWIC Asia Fund Class A Shares holds 1.50 per cent stake in the bank.

FIIs increased their stake in Karnataka Bank by almost 4 per cent in December from nil in the September quarter. They bought 15 lakh shares of the bank from the open market during the quarter. Goldman Sachs Investments Mauritius was the sole FII holding 3.76 per cent in bank.

During the period, FIIs bought an additional one crore equity shares each in Andhra Bank, Bank of India and Canara Bank.

FII stake in Andhra Bank increased by close to 3 per cent, from 2.64 per cent in September to 5.36 per cent in December. Their holding in Bank of India rose by 2 per cent to 4.22 per cent (2.19 per cent) and in Canara Bank by 2.51 per cent to 9.28 per cent (6.77 per cent).

In Corporation Bank, FIIs' holding increased by 1.7 per cent to 5.92 per cent, from 4.22 per cent. In ING Vysya Bank, their stake rose by 1.6 per cent to 19.77 per cent (18.13 per cent) and in South Indian Bank, their stake rose by 1.34 per cent from nil during the quarter.