Market

Happiest Minds Technologies had a stellar stock market debut on Thursday, with the IT firm’s shares closing 123 per cent above the IPO price.

Compared to the issue price of Rs 166, the stock closed at Rs 371 on the NSE, where shares worth Rs 1,945 crore changed hands.

This was the best debut for an IPO since IRCTC in October 2019, when shares of the state-owned firm gained 127 per cent on day one. Further, this was among the best day-one performances for an IT company since HCL Technologies’ listing over two decades ago.

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The blockbuster listing for Happiest Minds comes on the back of huge demand during its IPO last week, which saw 151x subscription.

It was also a happy

The markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Wednesday allowed emerging investment vehicles —REITs and InvITs — to list on stock exchanges operating in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC).

Besides, the watchdog has asked bourses in the IFSC to evolve a detailed framework prescribing the initial and continuous listing requirements for Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs) and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) whose units are proposed to be listed.

In a circular, Sebi said units of InvITs and REITs meeting certain conditions may be permitted to list on stock exchanges operating in the IFSC.

Such units should be regulated by the securities market regulators in the permissible jurisdictions.

Assets under management (AUM) for domestic exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have crossed the Rs 2-trillion mark.

In the past five months of FY21, AUM have surged more than Rs 60,000 crore, or 41 per cent.

A large portion of this was driven by the surge in share prices, while net inflows were also healthy at Rs 20,000 crore.

Further, more than half a million new ETF folios were opened. Market players said the huge number of actively-managed schemes in the large-cap space have failed to outperform the Nifty and Sensex in the past few years.

As a result, a lot of investors are turning to ETFs. In the past five years, AUM for ETFs have jumped nearly 5x.

At present, the Nifty remains the most popular index for ETFs, with assets crossing Rs 1 trillion.

State-run firms have been the biggest wealth destructors in the last six years, despite operating in monopolistic or oligopolistic setups, asset managers said on Monday.

The government has been pressing citizens to pay taxes and be compliant, but they have very little to show regarding improved efficiencies in the companies they themselves own, the managers added.

“If you look at the biggest wealth destroyer over the last six years, it has been the government-owned companies… PSUs including banks, utilities, oil companies etc. While it is nice to tell Indians to reform, we also have to hold mirror in some of these,” said Anand Radhakrishnan, CIO of Franklin Templeton.

Navneet Munot, CIO of SBI MF, said the PSU indices have been flat since March 2009, against a 5x return for many other asset classes.

Nilesh Shah, MD of

India’s mid- and small-cap stocks are set to receive a boost after the regulator tweaked rules for multi-cap mutual funds, a move analysts say could push about 400 billion rupees ($5.4 billion) to the broader market.

Multi-cap funds must hold at least 75% of their assets in equities — up from 65% at present — with 25% each in large, medium and smaller companies to ensure they stick to their mandate of investing in a wide set of stocks, the Securities & Exchange Board of India said in a circular late Friday.

The ruling that lays out how equity assets are to be spread across segments is aimed at balancing the playing field in a polarized market, where a handful of large companies have helped the main stock indexes erase the bulk of virus-induced losses even with India becoming the new