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C.R. Sukumar

Hyderabad , Dec. 17

BORREGAARD Industries Ltd has offloaded its entire equity holding in Suven Life Sciences Ltd in apparent moves to take advantage of the bull run in the capital market and book significant profits before the year-end.

As a technical and financial collaborator, the Norway-based Borregaard was holding 17.05 per cent equity shares in Suven Life. Of these shares, the company had initially acquired 3.5 lakh shares through open market purchase and subsequently another 4-lakh shares through preferential offer during 2001.

On Tuesday, Borregaard sold its entire stake in the open market. Though it was not known at what price the holding was offloaded, the Suven stock on Tuesday recorded a day's high of Rs 467.75 and a low of Rs 399 to close at Rs 447.85 on the Bombay Stock Exchange. The stock further recorded a rise of 9.21 per cent today to close at Rs 489.10 on the BSE.

Confirming that Borregaard had offloaded its entire holding in the market, the Suven Life Managing Director, Mr Venkat Jasti, told `Business Line' the collaborator might have resorted to profit booking keeping in view the calendar year-end. However, he said Borregaard would continue its technical collaboration arrangement with Suven Life.

As on March 31, 2003, the Indian promoters were holding 58.93 per cent in Suven's Rs 4.4 crore paid-up equity base, public 17.69 per cent, Borregaard 17.05 per cent, NRIs and OCBs 4.69 per cent, bodies corporate 1.6 per cent and institutional investors were holding a nominal stake of 0.04 per cent.

Meanwhile, Suven Life has decided to offer six-lakh fresh equity shares of the company in favour of three of the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) and an NRI at Rs 457 per share on a preferential allotment basis in terms of SEBI guidelines. The FIIs are Aeneas Portfolio Company LP, Batterymarch Financial Management Inc and Emerging Markets Management LLC. The NRI investor is Dr Rambabu Chirumamilla.

Together, the FIIs and the NRI would hold 13.73 per cent of the post-preferential issue equity. However, the company did not provide the break-up of the preferential offer for each of the investors.

In a press release on Wednesday evening, the company said the funds raised through preferential offer would be deployed for R&D activities, modernisation and expansion of manufacturing facilities and general corporate purposes.

An extraordinary general meeting is being convened on January 5, 2004 to seek the consent of the shareholders for the proposed equity issue.

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