Rate cut fails to cheer the indices

Tue, 2 Jun Closing

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   Pre-Open   

   09:30 am   

   01:30 pm   

The Indian stock markets witnessed a huge sell-off despite a repo rate cut announcement by the Reserve Bank of India in its policy meeting. BSE Sensex closed the day with losses of 691 points while NSE-Nifty ended the day lower by 197 points. BSE Mid Cap and BSE Small Cap too ended the day deep in the red with both the indices down by 2% each. All sectoral indices were trading significantly in the red. Among them, realty index fell the most, followed by banking, FMCG and PSU.

Asian markets closed the day on a mixed note. The Shanghai Composite gained 1.69%, while the Hang Seng and Nikkei 225 fell 0.47% and 0.13% respectively. European markets were also trading soft as Greek debt woes weighed on market sentiments. The rupee trimmed its initial gains and was down by 11 paise to 63.81 per dollar in the afternoon trade.

According to a leading financial daily, Tata Motors plans to appoint 30 more dealerships for its commercial vehicles in 6-12 months across the four regions in the country in a bid to ramp up its presence, especially in the southern markets. Five of the new dealerships will be in Tamil Nadu, two in Kerala and the rest across Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Reportedly, this would be largest in terms of the number of dealerships being appointed in one year. The dealerships would be rolled out on a franchisee model. At present, the country's largest commercial vehicles manufacturer has a total of 34 dealerships in the South, compared with 40-60 across other regions. Tata Motors is also looking at increasing the number of container workshops to 400 in the current financial year.

According to a leading financial daily, Engineering and construction major Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has bagged orders worth Rs 10.9 bn across various business verticals last month. The company's power transmission and distribution business bagged orders worth Rs 5.17 bn in both domestic and international markets. Besides, buildings and factories business vertical of the company secured an order worth Rs 3 bn for the design and construction of an integrated foods manufacturing factory in Punjab. Reportedly, the company also received orders worth Rs 2.8 bn, including construction of water and waste water infrastructure facilities at an upcoming township at Durgapur, West Bengal. L&T stock ended the trading day at in the red, down 1.97% from its previous closing price.