Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Fake housing loan scam hit markets in late trade

The domestic market witnessed a sharp fall today with huge selling coming in in the last half an hour of trade as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) conducted raids in metro cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai in context of the multi crore fake housing loans scandal. Fears of a likely financial scam triggered a huge sell-off in banking as well as realty companies' shares, leading the representative sectoral indices on the BSE to crash by around 3% each. There were reports that the CBI (economic offences wing) raided LIC Housing Finance - promoted by LIC (LIC has 36% stake in the company) - on November 23. The CBI is investigating a case of unjustified issuance of loan to one of the builders and misappropriation of funds at LIC Housing.

Capital goods, technology and cement companies' shares along with State Bank of India, Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC), HDFC Bank, SAIL and Reliance Communications underwent selling pressure. In the mid-cap space, TVS Motors, Gujarat Flourochem, Akzo Nobel, Apollo Tyres and Great Offshore gained in the range of 4-8% while Money Matters plunged 19% (on talks of a raid by CBI officials).

The Sensex began the session in the morning 43 points higher at 19735. The index held on to its gains through out the morning session. It hit the day's high of 19836 in the morning session. The 30 share bellwether Sensex  continued to trade in the green in the afternoon session holding on its morning gains. But in the last hour of trade it slipped drastically to hit the day's low of 19376 as banking and realty stocks fell sharply on news of the fake housing loan scam. 

At the finishing, the Sensex shut at 19460, lower by 232 points. The Nifty ended at 5866, down by 68 points.

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