Mumbai, Feb 13: The bonus shares of Reliance Industries are expected to be listed by the middle of next week. According to sources, a decision to this effect was taken at a meeting between the company representatives and top BSE officials on February 12.The company had earlier found it difficult to despatch the bonus shares to its shareholders on account of a pending RBI approval to clear the NRI accounts and also because of the massive work-load faced by its share transfer agent, Karvy Consultants.
"As RBI has given us the final clearance, we can now despatch the shares to the NRI shareholders and seek listing of the same on the exchanges," said a source at Karvy.
Sources, of course, continue to maintain that the company has not yet been able to submit the despatch certificate to the exchange. Company officials, however, say that this too would be completed by early next week.
"They have promised to provide us with the despatch certificate during early next week. Though the request for extension ofthe listing was on record, the official documents should come in only next week, which would enable us to list the shares within two days," said a BSE source.
The company had earlier sought extension from the BSE till January 31. The company had attributed the delay to voluminous nature of the job which required the processing of over five lakh transfer deeds.
Reliance Industries announced a liberal bonus issue in the ratio of 1:1 at its EGM held on October 16, 1997, after a gap of 14 years.
Meanwhile, several Indian institutions have asked the company to furnish the shares to them in the physical form. They have asked the company to provide them with single certificates to make the dematerialisation of the shares easier.
Sources have, however, questioned the very rationale of taking shares in the physical form when the same are available to the institutions in the demat form and can be directly credited to their respective accounts.
A little less than 15 per cent of the bonus shares have so farbeen credited to shareholders in the electronic form. This does not include the Indian institutions which have decided to dematerialise their shares only after receiving them in the physical form.
The book closure for the bonus was declared between November 29 and December 6, 1997.
As per the rules, the company is expected to despatch the bonus shares within a period of 30-45 days of the record date. Another period of 15 days is kept in store for the actual delivery of shares to the shareholders.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
