Battered Yes Bank stock seeing world’s biggest surge

By Suvashree Ghosh

India’s Yes Bank Ltd., the world’s worst-performing lender in 2019, has posted the globe’s biggest gain over the past month.

Its shares have rallied about 50% -- the biggest gain among global peers valued at more than $1 billion -- after embattled founder Rana Kapoor was forced to sell his holdings in October and a new management team promised fresh capital and lower bad loans. The surge helped pare the annual loss in the Mumbai-based lender’s shares to 63%.

Yes Bank rose about 3% as of 9:48 a.m. in Mumbai on Monday, while the main equity index was little changed.

The recovery will be a relief for new Chief Executive Officer Ravneet Gill, who’s been courting investors to revive the bank. India’s billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala this month bought shares of Yes Bank, after the lender announced a binding offer from an unidentified global investor to inject $1.2 billion.

Gill is rushing to raise funds. The latest results released this month show Yes Bank swung to a loss in the September quarter and its bad-loan ratio rose.

“Capital is of utmost importance to the bank and we want the money to be in the bank by December,” Gill told reporters after the results. “Once we get the capital it will run us for 24 months.”