L&T buys shares worth Rs 113 crore of Mindtree via open market

Engineering and construction giant Larsen and Toubro on Monday purchased shares worth about Rs 113 crore of Mindtree through open market transactions.

L&T bought over 11.52 lakh shares, or 0.75 per cent, worth Rs 112.91 crore with the average price being Rs 979.94 per scrip, as per bulk deal data available with the National Stock Exchange.

On Monday, the Mindtree stock opened tad lower at Rs 969 against previous closing level of Rs 970.20 and touched an intra-day high and low of Rs 983.50 and Rs 962.40, respectively, on the NSE.

However, the details of seller could not be identified immediately.

Earlier this month, infrastructure major L&T acquired a 20 per cent stake in Bengaluru-based IT services company at Rs 980 per share (for a total of Rs 3,211 crore) from Siddhartha and Coffee Day Enterprises through block deals. The company plans to raise its stake in Mindtree to 66.32 per cent by spending as much as Rs 10,800 crore through a combination of open offer and stock market purchase.

Also Read: L&T acquires VG Siddhartha's 20% stake in Mindtree, seeks shareholder meet

In March, L&T had announced to make an open offer to acquire a 31 per cent stake in Mindtree for Rs 5,030 crore ($730.20 million) after signing a pact with Siddhartha to buy his 20.32 per cent stake in the company.

In addition, L&T has placed an order with brokers to pick up another 15 per cent of the Mindtree shares from the open market. All the three acquisitions - adding up to a 66.32 per cent stake - are being done at Rs 980 per share.

Meanwhile, Mindtree had set up a committee of independent directors, headed by the lead independent director Apurva Purohit, to evaluate L&T's open offer. The committee has been asked to take in consideration all aspects of the 'unsolicited offer' by L&T and provide an informed view, keeping in mind the interest of all stakeholders in the company.

As on March 31, 2019, Mindtree promoters--including Chairman Krishnakumar Natarajan, Subroto Bagchi, Managing Director Rostow Ravanan and Chief Operating Officer NS Parthasarathy--were holding an aggregate 13.32 per cent stake in the company.

Edited by Chitranjan Kumar