NYSE seeks Infy listing

World's largest exchange, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is wooing India's showpiece IT firm Infosys Technologies to list its shares on its trading platform.

Sources said the US exchange group is trying to convince Bangalore-headquartered company to transfer its shares from rival NASDAQ to NYSE, which after its acquisition of the Euronext exchange early this year, brings together six cash equities exchanges in five countries.

Currently, there are a total of 11 Indian companies (including Tata Motors, Wipro, Satyam Computers, ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank) listed on NYSE, compared to three in NASDAQ.

Recent times have seen companies such as Sterlite Industries and WNS getting listed on the NYSE while others such as Genpact announcing its plans to go to NYSE.

Getting to convince Infosys Technologies to transfer its shares to NYSE would be a tough task for its officials, given that it became the first Indian company to figure in the prestigious NASDAQ-100 Index in recent months.

Madhu Kannan, managing director (Asia emerging markets) of NYSE Group, did not respond to a mail on this subject. V Balakrishnan, CFO of Infosys Technologies, said, "at present the company does not have any plans to move to NYSE".

He said at the time of its listing on NASDAQ in 1999, the company had evaluated both the exchanges and had preferred to list on the NASDAQ exchange.

"We decided on NASDAQ due to several factors," he said, pointing out that NASDAQ was an exchange "where most of the global technology companies are listed." The liquidity, depth of the market place, and volatility were the other factors, he said.

NASDAQ has been losing a stream of blue-chip companies to rival NYSE over the last couple of years.

In 2006, 13 companies including Red Hat, Under Armour and Safeco transferred their shares from NASDAQ to NYSE and in 2007, (up to June) another six companies moved from NASDAQ to NYSE. This year's transfers include American Eagle and PetroHawk, which was the number two oil & gas company on NASDAQ.

A spokesman for NYSE said: "We have had some leading companies move here, and they include companies that were formerly part of the NASDAQ-100. There are a good number of NASDAQ transfers in the immediate pipeline for the remainder of this year, complementing the more than 130 companies that moved from NASDAQ to the NYSE since 2000."

Significantly, NASDAQ has not attracted one company from the NYSE this year, and only a handful of companies ever moved voluntarily from the NYSE to NASDAQ, he explained.

Asked if the inclusion in NASDAQ-100 listing was acting as a deterrent to a move to NYSE, Balakrishnan of Infosys said: "I don't think so. But, as we understand, NASDAQ is one of the few global exchanges where a non-US company can get into one of their global indices."