Banks beef up books by selling stakes

Banks are beefing up their books before the half yearly closure by selling stake in strategic investments. CNBC-TV18’s Mrinalini Krishna takes us through some of the significant stake sales that took place over the last few days.

Banks are piling on to their books before half yearly closure. In the last few days of September we have seen a lot of stake sales. One of the key ones is Citigroup selling stake in Polaris. Citigroup’s arm, which is OrbiTech sold nearly 3.75% stake in Polaris, selling about 37 lakh shares at about Rs 131 odd per share, which means Citigroup raked in about Rs 56 crore. Citigroup previously, as on June 2009 held about 44% of Polaris. ICICI Bank has offloaded nearly 4.4% in 3i Infotech. ICICI Bank sold nearly 58 lakh shares at about Rs 80 odd garnering about Rs 46.5 crore for the bank. ICICI Bank, which held about 9.6% in 3i Infotech, has been talking about exiting 3i Infotech and I guess they saw the opportunity before the half yearly book closure and seized it.