FIIs raise stake in most top 100 cos

Driven by the second leg of reforms in the Winter session of Parliament and loosening in monetary policy, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) continued to increase their exposure to Indian equities during the December quarter. According to the latest data available with Capitaline, 83 companies have witnessed a sequential increase in the holdings of FIIs — the biggest drivers of the Indian equity market — during the December quarter. That accounts for 83% of the BSE top 100 companies that have announced their shareholding for the December quarter.

Within the BSE 200 universe, as many as 143 or 73% companies saw an increase in FII shareholding during the December quarter. Analysis of the shareholding data indicates that FIIs aggressively increased their exposure in banking and financial services space. Several measures on fiscal and monetary policies saw FII increase their shareholding in 7 out of 10 BFSI companies.

Moreover, FIIs remained net buyers in all private-sector banks during the December quarter as a result of superior quality of asset books, higher margins and strong retail franchise resulting in higher CASA (current account savings account) ratio compared with PSU banks. Housing finance major HDFC saw the biggest sequential increase (4.45 percentage points or pps) in FII shareholding during the December quarter followed by Federal Bank (3.65 pps).

Earlier this month, Bank of America Merrill Lynch in its survey stated that overseas investors continued to remain overweight on India based on expectations the government would continue with monetary and fiscal policy reforms.

"Investors are generally overweight India and added weight to Indian equity markets for the past six months," stated the survey, led by analysts Jyotivardhan Jaipuria and Anand Kumar. Incidentally, the Winter session of the Parliament was the most productive with many important bills, including retail FDI in Brand Retail Sector Bill, Companies Bill, and Banking Amendment Bill, being cleared by the policy makers.

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