You can soon trade on your mobile
Mumbai: Very soon traders will be able to use their mobile for buying and selling shares online. The technology for buying and selling equity shares on the mobile telephone is ready, the mobile operators are ready, and the stockbroking houses are waiting for the green signal from SEBI.
Broking houses like ICICI Direct, HDFC Securities, Geojit Securities, Kotak Street and Sharekhan have applied to the stock exchanges for permission to offer mobile trading and the stock exchanges in turn are awaiting permission from SEBI.

The registered base of online trading customers is 15 lakh and growing fast. Individual players are now expecting their subscriber bases to grow between 50 per cent and 100 per cent annually.

Officials are brokerages say most traders are young professional and depending on their office situation, some of them trade from their desktops at their office itself. Others whose offices are stricter about these matters, would trade from their homes or use their laptops wherever they are, or visit cybercafes. If the trading facility were made available on the mobile too, a large number of these customers would use this facility.
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MRF to declare interim
Mumbai: MRF has informed the BSE that a meeting of the board of directors of the company will be held on July 20, 2006, inter alia, to take on record the un-audited financial Results for the quarter ended June 30, 2006 and to declare interim dividend for the year ending September 30, 2006.
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BSE to divest 51 per cent equity; looks at strategic partner, IPO
The Bombay Stock Exchange is proposing to divest 51 per cent of its equity — 26 per cent to a strategic investor and 25 per cent to the public through an IPO. The BSE has appointed Kotak Mahindra Capital Company as advisors for the dilution of the equity.

The oldest stock exchange in the country that has corporatised itself recently is required to reduce its members' stake from 100 per cent to 49 per cent as per regulations. The exchange is now awaiting guidelines from the Securities and Exchange Board of India on the dilution of equity.

According to the plan, 26 per cent of the equity will be allotted to a strategic investor - either Indian or international including multilateral agency and banks, or other stock exchanges. In the next stage, 25 per cent of the equity will be offered to public and the exchange will get listed. The process of equity dilution would have to be completed by May 2007. However, the BSE is thinking of completing the process by December 2006.
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Bajaj acquires 1.42 per cent stake in ICICI
Mumbai: Bajaj Auto has bought an additional 1.42 per cent stake in ICICI Bank for Rs633.05 crore, raising its stake in the country's largest private sector bank to 4.13 per cent.

As on March 31, 2006, the Pune-based company held 2.71 per cent stake in ICICI Bank.

Bajaj Auto bought 68,04,926 shares at Rs499.73 a share and 48,66,552 shares at Rs499.43 a share.

ICICI Bank shares closed up 2.84 per cent at Rs499.50 today. Any entity wanting to raise its stake in a bank to more than 5 per cent will need the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) permission.

The RBI regulations do not permit any single entity to hold more than 10 per cent stake in a bank. ICICI Bank is a widely held company with the total foreign shareholding at 73.87 per cent of the shares as on March 31, 2006.

The foreign holding limit in banks is 74 per cent. Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) own 46.59 per cent of the shares of ICICI Bank and American depository receipt (ADR) holders owned another 26.81 per cent. Indian institutions own 15.07 per cent of ICICI Bank shares — 2.13 per cent by mutual funds and 12.94 per cent by banks and insurance companies.
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Sebi to decide on short selling by FIs
New Delhi: The Securities and Exchange Board of India is working on a plan to allow short selling by institutional investors and to support the same with a stock lending and borrowing system. Sebi is expected to shortly come out with details of a stock lending and borrowing programme.

Short selling takes place when investors sell shares they actually possess. In the current system, retail investors can sell short during the course of a day's trading, and subsequently during the same trading session execute a purchase transaction to close their position.
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