Fairfax Group sold its 5.9% stake in brokerage firm IIFL Securities for ₹118 crore through open market transactions.
The stake was sold by Hamblin Watsa Investment Counsel Ltd (HWIC) Asia Fund, an affiliate of Fairfax Financial Holdings, in two transactions on NSE and BSE.
As per the block and bulk deal data available with the NSE and BSE, Hamblin Watsa Investment Counsel Ltd A/C HWIC Asia Fund Class A Shares offloaded 1.20 crore shares on NSE and 60 lakh shares on BSE, amounting to a 5.9% stake in IIFL Securities.
IIFL Securities’ shares were sold in the price range of ₹65.45-65.67 apiece, totaling the combined transaction value at ₹117.94 crore.
After the stake sale, Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa-backed Fairfax’s shareholding in IIFL Securities fell to 3.38% from 9.28% at the end of June quarter.
Theleme India Master Fund Ltd acquired 80 lakh shares, Zafar Ahmadullah bought 40 lakh shares on the NSE, while Aalidhra Textool Engineers purchased more than 32.05 lakh shares of IIFL Securities on the BSE.
Shares of IIFL Securities rose 7.47% to close at ₹69.61 apiece on the BSE and jumped 7.02% to settle at ₹69.40 apiece on the NSE.
In June, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had barred IIFL Securities from onboarding new clients for two years for misutilisation of clients’ funds.
The order was issued after the Sebi conducted multiple inspections of the books of account of IIFL for the period from April 2011 to January 2017.
In its probe, Sebi had found that IIFL, earlier known as India Infoline Ltd, has misused the funds of its credit balance clients for settlement of its proprietary trades as well as the trades of its debit balance clients from April 2011 to June 2014, and the said violations were again noticed during March 2017 inspection for the period of FY16 and FY17.
