By IANS,
Mumbai : Despite the overall gloom on Indian stock markets, the shares of Reliance Communications opened sharply higher Monday and continued to rule in the green, a day after its board approved a 26 percent stake sale to a strategic investor.
The shares of the company, led by billionaire industrialist Anil Ambani, which had closed at Rs.168.15 Friday, opened 5.86 percent higher at Rs.178, and was ruling at Rs.170.45, some 150 minutes into trading.
This was the only scrip among the 30 stocks that comprise the sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) that opened higher Monday and among the three that were ruling in the green at the time of this report.
In sharp contrast, the Sensex was ruling at 16,743.25 points, down 374.44 points or 2.19 percent from its previous close at 17,117.69 points.
The company’s scrip had risen 14.03 percent last week on reports that UAE-based Etisalat was interested in acquiring a stake in Reliance Communications, which has a subscriber base of 109 million and offers mobile services on both GSM and CDMA platforms.
“The board of directors of Reliance Communications has approved in-principle the induction of strategic or private equity investors into the company for an up to 26 percent equity stake at an appropriate premium,” the company said in a statement Sunday.
The company, however, neither disclosed the name of the strategic buyer nor fixed any time frame for realising the proposal.
The speculation of stake sale started after Etisalat, which has been bullish on India and wants to be a major player in the country, withdrew from the third generation (3G) telecom airwaves auction after the bids surpassed the $2 billion-mark.
Such reports of stake sale had seen the shares of Reliance Communications soar 14.03 percent on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) during the week ended Friday at Rs.168.15.