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BSE to include four new stocks in Sensex from Nov 16

The Bombay Stock Exchange finally appreciated the show staged by information technology companies in the recent past on the Indian bourses by announcing today the inclusion of two infotech giants Infosys Technologies and NIIT alongwith Castrol and Novartis in the BSE-30 Sensitive Index.

While adding these four, the BSE excluded Arvind Mills, Great Eastern Shipping, Sail and IPCL from the Sensex. These changes in the calculation of the Sensex will take effect from November 16, BSE officials told reporters at a press conference in Bombay today.

Another leading bourse of the country, the National Stock Exchange also revised its indices by including infotech scrips recently.

Speaking on the occasion, Anand Rathi, a senior BSE director and chairman of the 15-member index committee, said that this is the second time in last two years the exchange has revised the Sensex to bring it in line with the present market situation. The earlier revision was done in August 1996, he said.

Rathi further said that after including these four stocks, market capitalisation of the index would be Rs 1.65 trillion as of September 30, 1998 which will be 34.5 per cent of the BSE market capitalisation.

The BSE has also revised weightage of scrips in the index while including these new stocks. According to revised index, the scrip having largest market capitalisation is Rs 334.75 billion of Hindustan Lever Limited representing 20.2 per cent of the index market capitalisation while the index having smallest market capitalisation is Rs 10.93 billion of Tata Power representing 0.66 per cent of the index market capitalisation.

Rathi said that after the inclusion of new scrips, turnover in the index-based scrips is likely to go up as most of the fund managers keep their eye on index-based scrips.

The index committee chaired by Rathi in the absence of BSE president J C Parekh who is presently on a foreign tour has decided to meet every quarter to review all the BSE indices. The committee also has laid down criteria for BSE-30 Sensitive Index selection and review in its meeting.

UNI