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Financial Technologies has offloaded a 5 per cent stake in MCX, thus completing the divestment of all its equity in the country’s largest commodity exchange.
FTIL, which was earlier declared unfit to own equity in commodity exchanges, sold its stake in the open market for an undisclosed amount on Wednesday. The company sold 2.69 per cent on the BSE and 2.31 per cent on the NSE. Of the 1,370,000 shares sold on the BSE, SBI Life Insurance bought 343,400 shares at ₹830 each.
Given MCX’s weighted average price on the BSE, the stake sale is valued at about ₹212 crore. MCX gained 5 per cent to close at ₹857 on Wednesday.
The Jignesh Shah-promoted FTIL had held a 26 per cent stake in MCX before another group company, National Spot Exchange, defaulted on trade settlements worth ₹5,600 crore.
“Without prejudice to legal rights and remedies, the company has further sold balance five per cent equity shares of MCX in the market,” said FTIL, in a statement.
Incidentally, commodity market regulator Forward Markets Commission has also approved Kotak Mahindra Bank’s move to buy a stake in MCX.
Last month, Kotak Bank signed a memorandum of understanding with FTIL to acquire 15 per cent of its MCX stake for ₹459 crore.
FTIL had sold a 6 per cent stake in MCX in two rounds for about ₹220 crore, lowering its shareholding to 20 per cent. After the agreement with Kotak Mahindra Bank, its stake came down to 5 per cent.
The development comes as a major relief for MCX. The Forward Markets Commission has banned it from launching new contracts for 2015 in a bid to exert pressure on the exchange to comply with an order directing promoter FTIL to divest its equity completely.
Getting approval for the launch of new contracts is critical as the exchange trades contracts three to four months in advance. MCX has to come up with the January contracts in September.
After declaring the MCX promoters unfit, FMC had recast its board with retired bureaucrats as independent directors. Currently, the exchange does not have a Managing Director.
The FMC elevated Parveen Kumar Singhal, Executive Vice-President of MCX, as interim CEO in May and gave the board two months’ time to appoint a new Managing Director. The exchange had to cancel interviews of the 15 candidates after Kotak Bank acquired a minority stake.
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