Morgan Stanley, which has been the biggest seller among the foreign institutional investors between 15th September (when Lehman Bros declared bankruptcy) and 15th October, has once again turned a buyer in India. The US financial services firm has bought shares in Bank of India and Redington over the last one week.
VCCircle scanned through the disclosures of bulk deals on Bombay Stock Exchange and it appears that the sheer drop in the benchmark Sensex to 10,000 levels— a two year low—is bringing back some FIIs who have been cashing out of India.
Morgan Stanley has purchased Bank of India shares worth Rs 104 crore ($21.2 million) on 20th October from Merrill Lynch. It also struck a small bulk deal worth Rs 13 crore in Redington, where again the shares were purchased from Merrill Lynch.
While buying and selling is a routine activity of FIIs, Morgan Stanley buy orders comes after a huge sell-off by the firm in one month starting with Lehman's bankruptcy.
Some number crunching by VCCircle shows that Morgan Stanley had sold shares worth Rs 1,929 crore between mid September and mid October through the bulk deal route alone. Morgan Stanley sold shares of nearly 50 firms and was the most active FII among those who were striking bulk deals.
Some of the big budget selloffs by Morgan Stanley with bulk deals exceeding Rs 50 crore happened in Jaiprakash Industries, Anant Raj Industries, Jai Corp, Lakshmi Overseas, KS Oils, S Kumar's Nationwide, Jindal Saw, Pantaloon Retail and United Spirits. A large part of this was acquired by European banks and fund houses such as Deutsche, ABN, Credit Suisse and Swiss Finance Corp, HSBC and Goldman Sachs to name a few.
