Custodian sells shares worth Rs 600 crore belonging to Big Bull

Mumbai: The custodian mandated by the Special Courts Act 1992 to sell the attached assets of the late Big Bull Harshad Mehta has so far sold shares realising around Rs 600 crore.

For the last 20 months, since September 2001, when the custodian actually began to sell assets belonging to Mehta, it has sold around 4 crore shares. It is considered that over Rs 1,000 crore worth of Mehta's shares are lying with the custodian.

The shares of blue chip companies, of which the beneficial ownership has been transferred to the custodian since January 2003, are alone expected to mobilise around Rs 500 crore by the end of the year.

In the month of January and April, Life Insurance Corporation had picked up shares worth Rs 300 crore from Mehta's portfolio including those of Hero Honda (60 lakhs share, 7.5 per cent of the company's paid-up capital), ITC (4.7 lakh), Hindustan Lever (6.3 lakh), Castrol (11.18 lakh), Tata Tea (7.3 lakh), Gujarat Ambuja (23.26 lakh), Reliance Industries (2.5 million) and 700,000 shares of Telco.

Punjab National Bank has acquired 1.5 million shares of Larsen & Toubro from the custodian for Rs 39.85 crore. Another Rs 5.49 crore came through the sale of Fairgrowth Financial Services shares. LIC picked up RIL shares from the custodian for over Rs 68.75 crore. The Reliance shares are understood to have been bought for about Rs 275 while the Telco shares were bought for Rs 175 a share an L&T for Rs 155.

Following this, the custodian sold Apollo shares amounting to 17 per cent of the company's equity to the Apollo management for around Rs 38 crore and currently ACC shares amounting to 12 per cent of the company's equity have been put for auction. The special courts have now fixed 30 September 2003 as the deadline for the completion of the sale.