Index funds want no shares of Reliance demerged cos.
Mumbai: Several index funds tracking Sensex and the Nifty are planning to sell shares of Reliance Industries (RIL) on January 17 and buy them back the next day when the stock is traded, without the value of the de-merged companies because index funds cannot invest in non-index shares.

Most of the index funds do not invest in shares of companies that are not part of the benchmark index in which they have decided to invest. The investment in the shares of the companies that are part of the index has to be in the same proportion as it is in a particular index.

The biggest index fund in India is that of Benchmark Mutual Fund, whose Nifty BeES, an exchange-traded fund, has a corpus of around Rs150 crore. This is followed by UTI Mutual Fund, which has around Rs90 crore spread over three schemes. Other index funds are those of ING Vysya Mutual Fund, Templeton, SBI Mutual Fund, Tata Mutual Fund, and Prudential ICICI Mutual Fund.
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LIC, IDBI, PNB submit bids for Maruti stake
New Delhi: The Life Insurance Corporation, Punjab National Bank and IDBI have submitted bids for acquiring the government's 8 per cent stake in Maruti Udyog.

The last date for submission of EoI is January 4 and a large number of state-owned banks are expected to participate. Bank of Baroda executives said the bank had not yet decided if it would submit an EoI.

At present, LIC is the only public institution, which holds a significant stake in Maruti, holding about 3.31 per cent at the end of September 2005.

The government holds 52,824,020 equity shares in Maruti, representing 18.28 per cent of the company's equity. Of this, 23,112,804 shares, representing 8.00 per cent of the equity, are on sale.

At Friday's closing price of Rs636.50 on the Bombay Stock Exchange, the sale of shares is expected to fetch over Rs1,471 crore for the government.

The government has said the present holding of the institution in Maruti and the shares sold by the government put together should not exceed 10 per cent equity of Maruti on the date of transfer. The minimum bid value has been fixed at Rs10 crore. The offer comes with a lock-in period of six months.
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