mahistuffs
Disciple
NEW DELHI: Shares in Bharti Airtel fell more than 5 percent on Thursday after the leading Indian telecom firm's chief executive sold his entire holding in the company.
Manoj Kohli sold all his 123,000 shares through open market transactions in two tranches on March 6 and 9, data from the National Stock Exchange released on Thursday showed.
A Bharti official said Kohli had sold the shares for personal reasons, which included to buy property.
At 11:55 a.m. the shares, which have more than 6 percent weight in the main index, were down 4.7 percent at 559.9 rupees, in a Mumbai market that was up 1.7 percent.
At current prices, Kohli's stake, which represented only 0.006 percent of Bharti's equity, would have been worth about $1.3 million.
"The market is worried why all of a sudden the CEO had to sell his holding," said R.K. Gupta, managing director at Taurus Asset Management.
He said investors were jittery about such insider stake sales after recent corporate scandals, including the alleged fraud at outsourcer Satyam Computer.
"So nobody wants to take a risk. And we see Bharti stock remaining under pressure. The recent TRAI announcement to cut interconnection charges is also negative for them," he said.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said on Monday it would reduce by a third from April 1 the termination charge telecoms firms pay each other for domestic calls to 20 paise a minute (less than half a US cent) from 30 paise earlier.
The firm from which a call originates pays a termination charge to the called network.
Bharti, which had 91.11 million mobile users as of end-February, is India's biggest mobile operator and competes with local firm Reliance Communications and global giant Vodafone in the world's fastest-growing cellular market.
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Well, great going for Airtel after the implementation of download caps :bleh:
Manoj Kohli sold all his 123,000 shares through open market transactions in two tranches on March 6 and 9, data from the National Stock Exchange released on Thursday showed.
A Bharti official said Kohli had sold the shares for personal reasons, which included to buy property.
At 11:55 a.m. the shares, which have more than 6 percent weight in the main index, were down 4.7 percent at 559.9 rupees, in a Mumbai market that was up 1.7 percent.
At current prices, Kohli's stake, which represented only 0.006 percent of Bharti's equity, would have been worth about $1.3 million.
"The market is worried why all of a sudden the CEO had to sell his holding," said R.K. Gupta, managing director at Taurus Asset Management.
He said investors were jittery about such insider stake sales after recent corporate scandals, including the alleged fraud at outsourcer Satyam Computer.
"So nobody wants to take a risk. And we see Bharti stock remaining under pressure. The recent TRAI announcement to cut interconnection charges is also negative for them," he said.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said on Monday it would reduce by a third from April 1 the termination charge telecoms firms pay each other for domestic calls to 20 paise a minute (less than half a US cent) from 30 paise earlier.
The firm from which a call originates pays a termination charge to the called network.
Bharti, which had 91.11 million mobile users as of end-February, is India's biggest mobile operator and competes with local firm Reliance Communications and global giant Vodafone in the world's fastest-growing cellular market.
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Well, great going for Airtel after the implementation of download caps :bleh:
