Azim Premji, founder of India’s third-largest IT services company Wipro, and his other group entities sold about 22.46 crore shares worth over ₹7,300 crore during the Wipro buyback offer that closed last month.
In a regulatory filing on Wednesday, Wipro said it had bought back 32.3 crore equity shares at ₹325 a share. The total amount utilised under the buyback was ₹10,499.99 crore.
Before the buyback, the promoter and group companies’ shareholding stood at 73.83 per cent; post buyback, this went up to 74.04 per cent. According to the filings, about 6.12 crore shares from Azim Premji Partner representing Zash Traders, 6.03 crore shares from Azim Premji Partner representing Prazim Traders, and 5.02 crore shares from Azim Premji Partner representing Hasham Traders, were accepted under the buyback. Earlier this year, Premji had announced that he is pledging 67 per cent of his total shares to Azim Premji Foundation.
About 4.05 crore shares from Azim Premji Trust and 1.22 crore shares from Azim Premji were also accepted under the buyback offer, the filing said. Over 1.34 crore shares were sold by the LIC under the buyback.
On July 30 this year, Premji stepped down as the executive chairman of Wipro passing on the baton to his son, Rishad Premji. Premji will be a non-executive, non-independent director of Wipro for the next five years.
Wipro’s shares fell 2.91 per cent to end the day at ₹248.15, on the BSE.