Pentafour reviews preferential offer

According to the release, many strategic investors and financial institutions in early December ’98 had shown interest in equity participation in the company at a price of Rs 600 per share even though the market price was around Rs 450 per share. At that time FII stake in the company was only 15 per cent.

The board of directors had hoped that by increasing the FII limit from 24 per centto 30 per cent, the company could bring in foreign equity which in turn could be used by it to pay off the external commercial borrowings (ECBs). The heavy trading in January saw FII holding in the company touch 24 per cent before the EGM and the scrip also shot up to Rs 900 levels. The re-rating of the stock in a period of six weeks from the date of the board meeting upset the interest shown earlier by the business partners and financial institutions.

Moreover, with the FIIs’ stake in the company increasing to 24 per cent, its strategy of raising money through FII investment was left only to the extent of 6 per cent.

IT majors to participate in fair

NEW DELHI: Leading global and national players are expected to participate in a week-long IT-Asia ’99, an Information Technology (IT) exhibition, beginning here on February 12. The show is being jointly organised by Manufacturers Association for Information Technology, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and National Association of Software andService Companies (Nasscom) for the first time. IT-Asia ’99 is expected to offer exhibitors the largest ever IT end user audience as varied industry segments, international companies and Indian corporate houses will be participating in the event. A major highlight of IT Asia ’99 will be vision seminars which would delegate on issues such as enterprise resource planning, java appliances, internet revolution and the Y2K bug.