Fully demutualised BSE to start trading on May 21

Mumbai, May 20: Tomorrow is slated to be a historic day for Asia's oldest exchange, as the 132-year old premier Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) resumes trading in it's new fully demutualised avatar.

From being an association of it's member brokers, the BSE has made a landmark transformation into a company, in a deal that is worth a whopping USD 1 billion. Though not willing to disclose the identities of all the investors who have been alloted stakes, BSE in a written statement said that, ''The investor group includes pedigreed marquee, domestic and overseas institutions as well as select domestic corporates and high networth individuals.'' It is worth recollecting here that earlier in January this year, the NYSE group and others, including Goldman Sachs had paid USD 460 million for stakes upto 20 per cent for BSE's rival, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) Under the demutualised scheme, approved by the Government and capital market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), member-brokers were required to offload at least 51 per cent of the Exchange's equity to those who are not member-brokers.

Accordingly, brokers had offered part of their holdings in the exchange to a pool. Of the total pool of shares offered by brokers, 91 per cent was accepted and 9 per cent returned to them.

Now 19 foreign and domestic investors have been alloted 41 per cent of the Exchange's stake at Rs 5,200 per share, the president of the BSE Brokers Forum, Mr Mohan Kumar Vijan said.

It may be recollected here that earlier, the exchange had sold it's 5 per cent stake to the Singapore Exchange and another 5 per cent to Deutsche Borse for Rs 5,200 per share, thus taking the total tally to 51 per cent and effectively rendering the BSE as a professional company from now onwards.

UNI