By IANS,
Mumbai : India’s largest private sector lender ICICI Bank shares suffered heavy hammering on the bourses Friday due to its overseas exposure.
During intra-day trading, the ICICI scrip fell by almost 27 percent to Rs.326 on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
The bank stock has slumped almost 50 percent from the beginning of September following the global credit crisis that has led to the collapse or buyout of several US and UK-based banks.
However, ICICI joint managing director Chanda Kochar said Friday afternoon her bank has sufficient liquidity. “We have about Rs.120 billion in funds in international operations. The bank has never used rupee funds for its international growth initiatives,” she said.
Last week, ICICI Bank CEO and managing director K.V. Kamath had said the current market conditions on investment portfolio valuation will not pose any challenge to ICICI Bank’s capital position.
“We have a strong capital position with net of over $10 billion and total assets over $105 billion,” Kamath had said.
According to Khandelwal Securities head of research Ashok Jainani, the plunge is just the reflection of the global liquidity squeeze. “About 70 percent of the stock is held by foreigners. There is heavy selling by overseas investors,” he said.
ICICI through its London-based subsidiary had around 57 million euro exposure in senior bonds of Lehman Brothers Inc.
However, the bank said that it had not been impacted much by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which constitutes less than one percent of ICICI Bank UK Plc’s total assets and 0.1 percent of ICICI group.
The shares of ICICI are now trading at Rs.372.50 mid-afternoon.