Our Bureau
Chennai, Feb. 3 The stock markets could get an investor liquidity booster dose this week. About Rs 1 lakh crore may come back from investors who will be getting their money back after failing to secure allotments in the Reliance Power IPO. This is the biggest refund amount in stock market history.
The reverse flow has begun to the unsuccessful applicants. About Rs 73,000 crore of money has been refunded mainly to qualified institutional buyers and high net worth individuals, during the past two days (Friday and Saturday) said Mr Bhavesh Zhaveri, Executive Vice-President, Cash Management Services, HDFC Bank.
Retail payments commenced on Saturday with about 3.8 lakh transactions worth Rs 2,000 crore being sent to individuals. HDFC Bank is the sole refund bank in this exercise.
Mr Zhaveri said that there would be another 15-20 lakh payouts on Monday and Tuesday covering another Rs 20,000 crore. He said that the bank had begun preparing for the exercise of refunding over the last 10-15 days. About 1,500 people have been deployed to ensure all payments were routed smoothly in various offices.
He said that the scale of the operation was significantly different, since the Reliance Power IPO was sold across 125 locations compared to the average of 50 to 60 locations in the case of other IPOs.
What were the challenges? For one, many agencies were involved — the regulator, the registrar, collecting banks, the RBI and their own back-end staff. Collecting banks had to ensure that there was smooth transfer of funds and the registrars to the issue had to ensure that there were no problems with the data.
Any hitches so far? Just a few minor ones, said Mr Zhaveri. They got sorted out within minutes. So has the exercise been successful? So far, it’s been smooth. We’ll know for sure in two weeks time when everyone gets his or her money back, he said.
Source : thehindubusinessline.com
