The Hindu Business Line : A negative week for Indian counters too

THE sharp recovery last Friday at the US markets was not enough for the benchmarks to end the week in positive territory due to the terrorist attack in Madrid last week.

According to Bloomberg data, the US benchmarks' decline was steepest since September. The Nasdaq lost 3.07 per cent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered a loss of 3.35 per cent and the S&P 500 crashed 3.14 per cent.

The domestic markets also suffered sharply on relentless all-round selling; the local funds were mainly responsible for the downslide as they booked profits ahead of the fiscal-end.

The BSE Sensex fell by 3.06 per cent and the NSE's S&P CNX Nifty by 2.97 per cent.

For the Indian ADRs, it was a bad week as none of the counters ended in positive territory.

VSNL, which registered a 52-week high of $9.66 during the week, also ended on weak note at $8.7 against the previous week's close of $9.02.

Concerns that VSNL would come under the rating pressure following telecom major Data Access India Ltd's decision to reduce its international call seemed to have hurt the sentiment.

VSNL had been in the limelight of late ever since it announced a strategic partnership with Asia Netcom to enhance India's connectivity to the Asia-Pacific region through the Tata Indicom India-Singapore Cable undersea cable system.

Even some positive announcements from infotech majors such as Satyam Computer and Infosys Technologies did not help these counters end the week with gains.

For instance, Satyam Computer said that it had won a three-year contract from Nestle SA while Infosys Technologies announced that it plans to hire as many as 2,000 persons in the quarter ending March 31. Despite these announcements, Satyam closed lower at $19.75 ($20.64) and Infosys at $79 ($81.53); Wipro also closed weak at $40.4 ($42.5).

However, the week marked a special occasion for Infosys. The company celebrated its fifth year anniversary as a publicly traded company on Nasdaq on March 11. Infosys is the first Indian-registered company to achieve this milestone on Nasdaq.

On the premium/discount front, most counters held on close to the levels of the previous week, though for MTNL the premium dropped by over eight percentage points to 22.71 per cent (31.1 per cent).

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A negative week for Indian counters too