FIIs reduce holding in real estate companies

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have reduced their holding in real estate companies, particularly Unitech and Parsvnath Developers by over 2 percentage points and by 0.8 percentage point respectively, year-on-year. According to shareholding data available on BSE, the financial institutions and banks have increased their holding in Unitech Ltd by just over 1.5 percentage points, even as the stake of FIIs has come down.

In the case of Parsvnath, there were marginal changes in the institutional shareholding within the non-promoter category, even as the ‘individual’ holding rose by just less than a percentage point. “The FII stake in Parsvnath had almost doubled between June 2007 and December 2007, but came down subsequently, in line with market trend,” a market observer said. When it comes to ‘public shareholding’ in Unitech, the stake held by various mutual funds and UTI stood at 0.51 per cent on June 30, 2008 — a tad higher than 0.25 per cent in the year-ago period. According to market sources, while FIIs have trimmed their holding in Unitech, the shares sold by them may have been picked up by private Indian insurance firms.