Tech promoters trim their holdings

In almost all the IT companies, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have absorbed the securities sold by the public, select domestic institutions and promoters.

This upturn in tech stocks comes almost after three years, since the markets, led by tech stocks, had been going through a lull after the tech bubble burst in the year 2000.

As per the shareholding pattern available on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) website, the promoter holdings in Satyam Computers slipped to 17.4 per cent (or 5.5 crore equity shares) as on March 31, 2004 from 20.7 per cent (6.5 crore) a year earlier. During the period, the public holding in Satyam came down to 6.1 per cent from 8.5 per cent.

By end-March 2004, the promoters’ holdings in Infosys slid to 26.5 per cent (1.8 crore equity shares) from 28.4 per cent (1.9 crore equity shares) as on March 31, 2003.

In the case of Wipro, there was only a marginal dip in the promoters’ holding. The holding of Azim Premji and his family came down to 83.7 per cent (19.49 crore equity shares) of the total equity from a holding of 83.9 per cent (19.51 crore equity shares) as on March 31, 2003.In select cases, the promoters’ holdings were also trimmed on account of the rise in the equity base on account of various reasons including issuance of fresh shares to strategic/long term investors etc.

In the case of Polaris Software, though the holdings of the promoters shrunk to 24.4 per cent from 46.3 per cent, the number of shares held by the promoters remained unchanged at 2.4 crore equity shares during the period. The equity shares of the company in FY04 rose to 9.8 crore equity shares from 5.1 crore equity shares.

The promoters’ holding in Polaris shrunk after OrbiTech merged with Polaris and the shareholders in OrbiTech received Polaris shares.