Indian share markets open in the green

Fri, 19 Sep 09:30 am

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Barring China (down 0.2%), all major Asian stock markets have opened the day on a firm note with the markets in Japan (up 1.5%) and South Korea (up 0.4%) leading the gains. The Indian share markets have also opened the day on a positive note. Barring the consumer durables and FMCG indices, all sectoral indices are trading firm with power and realty indices leading the gains.

The Sensex today is up by around 72 points (0.3%), while the NSE-Nifty is up by about 27 points (0.3%). The mid and small cap stocks are also trading in the green with the BSE Mid Cap and BSE Small Cap indices up by around 0.85% each. The rupee is currently trading at Rs 61.06 to the US dollar.

Information technology stocks have opened the day in the green with Info Edge Ltd and Mphasis Ltd leading the gains. As per a leading financial daily, India's second largest software exporter Infosys has announced new partnerships with Microsoft, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) and Huawei. The aim of these partnerships is to deepen its product offerings in new disruptive areas, including cloud and big data analytics, communication, infrastructure and data centre transformation segments. It must be noted that Infosys is already a systems integration partner of Microsoft. It will now establish a global 'centre of excellence' for Microsoft Azure Machine Learning that will train over 1,000 engineers by the end of financial year 2014-15. Its partnership with HDS, a subsidiary of Japan's Hitachi, will offer enterprises infrastructure and data centre transformation solutions. It will also set up a centre of excellence for 'pay-per-use' solutions. Lastly, the company's partnership with Huawei is to help the Chinese firm expand its solutions in cloud, big data and communication space.

Indian Pharma stocks have opened the day on a firm note with Panacea Biotech and Biocon Ltd leading the gains. As per a leading financial daily, Bangalore-based biotechnology firm Biocon has stated that Silver Leaf Oak (Mauritius), an investment vehicle advised by India Value Fund Advisors, has agreed to acquire a minority stake of 10% in its research services arm, Syngene International Ltd, for Rs 3,800 million. It must be noted that the stake purchase comes a week after GE Capital exited from its 7.69% stake in Syngene, which was bought by Biocon Research (BRL), another subsidiary of Biocon, for Rs 2,153.8 million. Now, Biocon and BRL will jointly hold 85.54% stake in Syngene, while Silver Leaf Oak will hold 10%. The balance 4.46% shareholding is held by some entities such as trusts and employees stock options. It is worth noting that Biocon has been looking to list Syngene International on the Indian bourses. However, the timeline for an IPO has not been indicated so far. The research services arm reported revenue of Rs 7,150 million in FY14, reporting a growth of 28%.

The stake purchase by Silver Leaf Oak gives Syngene a higher valuation at R3,800 crore compared to around R2,800 crore at the time of GE Capital's exit on September 9.