India trumps South Korea in m-cap

The Indian market today displaced its South Korean counterpart to attain the fourth position in the market cap rankings for the Asia Pacific region, with a total market cap of $821 billion. With a market cap of $811 billion, South Korea has moved to the fifth position.

India Inc's market capitalisation touched a record high of $821 billion today, while the Korean market fell marginally as the Seoul Composite declined by 0.41 per cent. Japan leads the Asia-Pacific market cap rankings with $4,800 billion, Hong Kong ranks second and Australia, third.

The number of stocks with a market cap of over $1 billion in India has increased to 131 from 125 in the last six months. Five of the new entrants, Reliance Petroleum ($6.6 billion), Tech Mahindra ($3 billion), GMR Infrastructure ($2.9 billion), Parsvnath Developers ($2.1 billion), and Lanco Infratech ($1.3 billion) got into the club after their public offers.

NMDC got into the list with its market cap moving up from $0.70 billion six months ago to $2.50 billion now.

On May 10, when the BSE Sensex hit a high of 12,612.38, 125 companies had a market-cap of over $1 billion. Membership of the club is based on the rupee-dollar exchange rate of Rs 44.52 on December 5, 2006.

India Inc's total market cap today hit a record high of Rs 36,57,499 crore ($821 billion), which is 3.16 per cent higher than India's GDP of $796 billion.

The companies with over $1 billion of market cap account for only five per cent of the total stocks traded on the BSE.

Of the 131, as many as 17 are from the banking sector, 10 from the information technology sector, eight each from pharmaceuticals and construction, seven from the refinery sector, six from power and automobiles, five from cement, and four each from non-banking finance and telecommunications.

ONGC tops the list with a market cap of $41.2 billion (Rs 1,83,336 crore). The company's market-cap has fallen by $5.9 billion (Rs 28,336 crore) in the last six months. It stood at $47.1 billion (Rs 2,11,672 crore) on May 10.

Reliance Industries comes second with a market cap of $40.1 billion (Rs 1,78,432 crore), Infosys Technologies was at the third position with $28 billion (Rs 1,24,491 crore), followed by NTPC with a market cap of $27.7 billion (Rs 1,23,353 crore).