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Mumbai, Oct. 14 Life Insurance Corporation of India, the largest domestic institutional investor, continued to pile up shares in stock market heavyweights, notwithstanding IRDA’s proposal that it prune its stake in a single company to below 10 per cent.

LIC has raised its stake in all the 15 Sensex companies that have disclosed their shareholding pattern for the September quarter to the stock exchanges.

LIC has been buying shares even in those companies where it already had more than 10 per cent stake.

During the recent market decline due to large-scale pull out by FIIs, the public sector outfit could have been pressured to buy, said analysts. The domestic financial institutions have been net buyers of equity right through the recent market decline.

All along LIC has been buying shares when the FIIs were selling to stop the market fall, sources close to insurance company said. “The public sector insurance company bought shares worth around Rs 12,000 crore during the recent market meltdown,” one of them said.

LIC’s stake has gone up in ACC during the September quarter to 17.18 per cent against 15.93 per cent at end of June. The other Sensex companies where LIC raised its stake during the September quarter and held more than 10 per cent of shareholding were L&T , Reliance Infrastructure, Tata Motors, Tata Steel and Tata Power.

“In some of these companies, like ITC, Ranbaxy and Larsen & Toubro, LIC has been allowed to maintain its shareholding,” said an analyst handling institutional clients at a broking firm.

In HDFC Bank, LIC’s stake has risen sharply to 4.7 per cent in the last quarter from 2.15 per cent in the previous quarter.

LIC had less than one per cent stake in HDFC Bank during the March quarter.

More Stories on : Stock Markets | Life Insurance

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