Network is quoting at Rs 14.90 against the offer price of Rs 3.80; HCL Office Automation's current price is Rs 18.85 while the offer price is Rs 8.30 and IDM is trading at Rs 5.05 against the offer price of Rs 2.

The shares of these three companies have witnessed a surge over the last few sessions, driven partly by the expectations of open offers and partly by the blind faith in the potential of the these three companies, given the current bull run in infotech stocks and the success of other HCL group companies like HCL Infosystems.

Investors will now have to book losses as the stock prices are likely to drop close to the offer price. Network's scrip fell from Rs 19.8 to 14.9 with a volume of 43,300 shares on the Bombay StockExchange on Friday, the day the offers were announced.

But interestingly, punters betting on HCL Office Automation seem to have ignored the offer price of Rs 8.3, with the company's scrip rising from Rs 16.85 to Rs 18.85 on a volume of 22,750 shares. IDM's scrip, too, dropped only marginally to Rs 5.05 from Rs 5.1.

IDM and Network have huge accumulated losses of over Rs 24.5 crore and Rs 14.21 crore as on June 1997 and September 1996 respectively. HCL Office Automation's net worth, too, has dropped from Rs 32.28 crore to Rs 4.31 crore as in October 1997.

Expectations of an open offer led to a blind bull run in these scrips. Not only did trading resume in these illiquid counters, the scrips prices were pushed by over six times in just a few trading sessions. HCL Office Automation's scrip was trading at around Rs 3 in March, but it zoomed to over Rs 20 on April 21 to fall back to the current level of Rs 18.85. Volumes improved substantially from 100-200 shares a day to around 22,000-25,000 shares aday.

Slocum Investment, an investment company, intends to buy 32 lakh equity shares (representing 21.84 per cent of the company's equity) at Rs 8.3 per share, which is 1.1 per cent higher than the average of the weekly high and low for the past 26 weeks.

Network Ltd's shares have, in a matter of just eight sessions, zoomed from Rs 6.5 to Rs 25 on May 26. The scrip dropped to Rs 19.8 and further to Rs 14.9 on May 29. Volumes, too, shot up during the period. The scrip was thinly traded with an average daily trading volume of 100-200 shares, which shot up to around 27,000-30,000 shares a day. More than one lakh shares were traded on May 27. Shiv Nadar Investments Pvt Ltd, a company with an equity of Rs 97.4 lakh, has offered to buy 19.40 lakh fully paid-up shares and 1,300 partly paid-up shares (30.14 per cent of Network's total equity) at a price of Rs 3.8.

IDM's offer at Rs 2 is against the current market price of Rs 5.5. Shiv Nadar Investments Pvt Ltd has offered to buy 18.08 lakh shares representing82.23 per cent of IDM's equity. The three open offers have been floated with no minimal level of acceptance, which means the acquirer will receive all equity shares tendered up to a maximum number as stated in the offer.