Bourses rectify RPL trades data

MUMBAI: The country’s premier stock exchanges have now provided more clarity on Reliance Industries’ (RIL) sale of RPL shares, following DNA Money’s story that the data available with the exchanges were not adding up.

RIL late last week had revealed that it unloaded shares in Reliance Petroleum, which amounted to a 4.08% stake sale for Rs 4,023 crore.

The two exchanges have said that RIL has now given the footnotes giving the dates between which the trades happened.

DNA Money had reported on November 29, 2007, about the mismatch in the figures given by the company when it announced the stake sale on November 23 and the mismatch in the exchange data.

While RIL had said that it started the market operation between November 14 and November 23, as per details with us, the company had commenced the biggest stock market operation in the country on November 6.

Kalyan Bose, head, corporate affairs, BSE, said: “We have filed it in the same manner as it was sent to us by the company. The company had elsewhere in their filing mentioned the period during which the shares were sold by RIL, giving the from and to dates.

“These details were not carried as part of the announcement. However, after the DNA Money report, we felt further clarification was needed, and therefore, the footnotes giving the dates on which the trades happened were added to the original announcement.”

An NSE spokesman, too, said so much. “The company has clarified with the exchange after the news article in DNA Money, following which the footnotes describing the period in which the shares were sold was added,” he said. The sale operation of 18.4 crore shares was so savvy that hardly anyone in the markets was aware of the seller’s identity, till the unloading lasted for about 10 days.

On November 6, RIL sold the largest chunk of 7.18 crore shares, which amounted to 1.60% of RPL and earned about Rs 1,691.48 crore, at an average sum of Rs 235, in the process.

This was the single-largest chunk to be unloaded, with the subsequent tranches accounting for less than 1%.

After November 6, there was a lull.

RIL returned to the markets on November 13 to 16, selling 0.30%, 0.65%, 0.38% and 0.13% RPL stakes, respectively. From November 19 to 23, the shares sold were again less than a percentage point. In this period, RIL sold 0.34%, 0.22%, 0.08%, 0.20% and 0.12% of RPL stake, respectively.

While RPL and RIL clearly adhered to every law on reporting norms such as informing the exchanges etc, some questions still linger.

While DNA Money had earlier reported about spikes in the futures & options segment before the share unloading, it now emerges that the cash segment was also not immune to a couple of spikes that reflected in unnatural delivery of shares. They were not operators, but people who owned the shares. And they sold at higher prices than what RIL’s sales fetched.

What’s intriguing is that huge voluminous trades were registered a few days before RIL started selling RPL shares. The whole November saw intriguing trading spikes in the RPL counter.

On November 1, the two premier exchanges witnessed frenetic activity as the refinery share recorded an intra-day all-time high of Rs 295 before it ended the day’s high-octane trading at Rs 261.85 per share. On that day, the delivery of shares accounted for 4.5 crore. And the character of trading that day was also very different as it ended with an unusually huge wave of deliveries.

About 4.46 crore RPL shares were delivered that day. On November 2, the deliveries recorded in the RPL counter in both the exchanges were muted at 1.76 crore share. On November 5, the spike was witnessed again as deliveries pole-vaulted to 3.36 crore and the share price ended at Rs 267.55.

While some demand was witnessed in the counter, it should be noted that there were sellers who matched the wits of buyers by unloading shares for delivery instead of squaring off, as in day trading.