Note blatant pump and dump IPO’s have made the Indian market a heaven for stock market operators.Despite this going on for years,only recently SEBI has taken some steps against the manipulartion of the primary market.Now SEBI has taken some steps in the Insider Trading case as well by fining executives of JP Associates and Ranbaxy both of which are constituents of the Indian main stock market index. However a mere fine will not do to deter insider traders.A big jail term for a insider trader will make white collar criminals think more in indulging in criminal activity rather than small fines .
SEBI has been strangely and inexplicably absent from its role of supervising the primary market in India despite a stream of pump and dump IPO by small disreputable promoters and investment bankers.Most of these IPOs have no fundamentals to justify lofty valuations and without the role of market operators and investment bankers have no hope in hell of getting subscribed.Its a scary gambling scheme in which retail investors put money only with the hope of getting out on the first day with probably listing gains.There is no way that an investor can make money in these issues in the long term.However the shenanigans of the promoters and bankers have gone unpunished leading to more and more of these junk IPOs getting into the stock market everyday.This only brings a bad name to Indian stock markets where manipulation can happen so brazenly and openly and pushes away genuine investors away from equities.SEBI has been recently been trying to get more retail investors into the stock market however it seems mere words as it does not take action on open corruption.
Future Ventures is a VC/Private Equity Company that has invested in a number of small Indian companies and startups mainly focused on the consumption industry in India.With India growing at around 8-9% in the last few years and expectations of strong future growth driven by consumption,Future Ventures seems a good investment considering the portfolio of companies that it owns (analyzed below).Future Ventures is a part of the Future Group run by Kishore Biyani who started India’s most famous retail company Pantaloons.The Company has set a price band of 10-11 rupees a share with a target of raising around Rs. 750crore though the IPO.This would represent around 40% of the equity which would give it a post IPO market capitalization of around $375 million.Note the company had tried to come with an IPO 2 years ago but it was deemed to expensive at that time.
PTC India Financial Services has substantial advantages of growth,a good business model in India’s booming Energy Sector.However the valuation of the company has been kept too high for essentially what is a financial intermediary.The growth of the company has been compensated by the high valuation making it not such a good buy especially in the context of the current stock market and economic conditions.It might be better to look at cheaper alternatives in the Indian Infra Sector.
India’s GDP has been growing at a rapid clip over the past decade and is set to grow at even a faster pace in the coming decade.Financial services penetration of the Indian economy is quite low compared to even other developing economies.With majority of the Indian population mired in poverty,access to banks and financial companies is quite hard as people lack knowledge and education.India’s banks have grown at a rapid pace over the past 2 decades after the financial liberalization.However this growth has still lacked in meeting the massive demand in the need of financial intermediation.This has led to the growth on non-banking financing companies (NBFCs) and microfinance companies.With the opening of the insurance sector,financial companies in India are set to enter a new growth phase.Major banks in India are either state owned or previous government owned institutions which have been fully privatized like ICICI and HDFC Bank.Both the state owned banks and the private banks have managed to grow without throwing the whole system in a crisis like what has happened in the recent past in Europe and USA and in China in the 1990s.Here is a list of the 10 Major Banks in India
Acropetal Technologies is a bit different from the run of the mill junk IPOs coming out in Feb 2011.After a deluge of crap IPOs in 2010,2011 has not seen many of them as the markets have corrected by around 15%.However a recent rally has bought out the junk companies in association with their associated shady bankers and market operators.Omkar,Sudar,FCL are some of the totally crap IPOs which have happened or in the process of happening.Acropetal Technologies is an IT/ITES company plans to raise Rs 170-crore through its IPO on February 21. The company has fixed the price-band of its IPO at between Rs 88 and Rs 90 per equity share.The company will use Rs 55 crore for acquisitions and Rs 26 crores for a software office.The company seems better quality than the junk and may merit a look from investors though there are much better companies on offer at better prices in the secondary markets.Here are the positives and negatives of the IPO