Rana Kapoor sheds 6% stake in YES Bank in Q2

The co-founder and former Managing Director of the embattled YES Bank -- Rana Kapoor -- has offloaded close to 6% stake in the bank, he founded 15 years ago, during the September quarter -- one of the most tumultuous for the bank.

During the quarter, many of the pledged shares of Kapoor were invoked by asset management companies. Sources say that it was because of the margin calls, as the shares of the bank tanked. The margin call is a demand by a broker that an investor deposits further cash or securities to cover possible losses.

As a result of this, Kapoor’s shareholding in YES Bank reduced to 4.72% from 10.6% a quarter ago. The shares of YES Bank declined by 62% during the quarter to a sub-Rs 50 level.

Kapoor, who was once a dominant promoter in YES Bank, has almost half of the stake owned by another promoter -- Madhu Kapur, who saw her shareholding dip by a mere 0.84% during the quarter to 8.33% from 9.17% a quarter ago.

Kapoor and Madhu have a bitter relationship with each other (including legal battles), after the latter’s husband and co-founder of YES Bank Ashok Kapur passed away in the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai.

Foreign portfolio investors of the bank have also offloaded 7.18 percentage points in their stake in the bank, trimming it to 26.51%.

On the other hand, Mutual Funds have increased their holdings in the bank by 2.67 percentage points to 9.26% during the quarter. Analysts say that it is primarily because of the bank’s qualified institutional placement during the month of August.

As a result of these movements, the retail investors have emerged as the single largest investor group at the bank. The retailer investors, who upped their stake by 9.48 percentage points, saw their shareholding in the bank jump to 29.94% from 20.5% in the previous quarter.

Bharti denies interest

Meanwhile, Bharti group has denied that it is interested in buying the bank, contrary to the reports that the bank was invoking the interest of telecom mogul Sunil Bharti Mittal. The bank, on its part, didn’t comment over the issue in a BSE filing.