Sensex ends 232 points lower on housing finance scam
24 Nov 2010
Equity benchmarks witnessed a sharp fall on Wednesday in the last half hour of trade with news that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has conducted raids in the premises of LIC housing finance in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai. The 30-share BSE Sensex shed 279 points to close at 19412. The 50-share NSE Nifty plunged 83 points to settle at 5,851
CNBC-TV18 reported that the housing loan scam not only involved a few developers but some Central Bank of India officials as well. Sources told CNBC-TV18 that the CBI had interrogated some Central Bank officials as well as Senior LIC Housing Finance executives. Several arrests, related to the scam, are likely to be made. This triggered huge sell-off in the banking as well as in the realty companies' shares. Respective indices crashed 3% each.
Sensex choppy; HDFC, Wipro, BHEL, L&T, HDFC Bank dip
At 14:22 hours IST - the 30-share BSE Sensex was extremely volatile in trade ahead of F&O expiry for the month of November and was hovering around its previous closing value. Even European markets were directionless today.
On the one side, capital goods, technology and cement companies' shares along with SBI, ONGC, HDFC, HDFC Bank, SAIL and Reliance Communications were witnessing selling pressure.
However, indices were getting support from Reliance Industries, M&M, Bharti, Tata Motors, ITC, ICICI Bank, Tata Steel, PNB, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Dr Reddy's Labs, HUL and NTPC.
The Sensex was trading at 19676, down 15.6 points and the Nifty was at 5929, down 5.7 points. However, the broader indices were positive in trade; the BSE Midcap Index was up 0.4% and Smallcap up 1%.
