Ashok Soota offloads 5.5% stake in MindTree

Ashok Soota , former Chairman of IT firm MindTree, on Thursday sold half of his 11.4 per cent stake in the company in a block deal.

It was, however, not clear who has picked up his stake since the transaction has taken place in the open market.

Leaderspeak with Ashok Soota

Soota confirmed the news of him selling his 5.5 per cent stake sale in the IT company, but did not specify the buyers and price of the deal.

He added that the sale took place on the National Stock Exchange at a decent premium.

Shares of Mindtree zoomed up by over 19 per cent in morning trade on the bourses following the reports that 22 lakh shares of the company changed hands in a block deal.

According to the reports, the deal was done at Rs 428 per share, which is at an 18.58 per cent premium vis-a-vis on Wednesday's closing price of Rs 361.

The stock soared by 18.17 per cent to touch a month's high of Rs 426.60 on the BSE, while on the NSE, the scrip surged by 19.13 per cent to touch an early peak of Rs 430.

The stocks settled at Rs 392.65, up 8.77 per cent from its previous close on the BSE.

Soota, along with nine other industry professionals, had set up MindTree in August 1999. In January this year, he resigned from the post of executive chairman to start his new business venture, Happiest Minds Technologies.

To be launched in later half of the year, Happiest Minds will offer six lines of business - IT services, R&D services, software product engineering, remote infrastructure management, testing and consulting.