The possible takeover of the Chennai-based Orchid Pharmaceuticals and Chemicals Ltd by Solrex Pharmaceutical company (reportedly a Ranbaxy promoted group company) had sought investors? attention even before the acquiring company started to mop up Orchid shares from the open market.
Solrex Pharmaceuticals made three bulk deals on March 31, April 3, and April 7, by purchasing more than 30 lakh shares of the company at a deal size of around Rs 5.3 crore, buying a stake of 8% in Orchid chemicals. The average acquisition price stood at Rs 177 per share.
However, the last week of March saw some 19 bulk deals being executed on the BSE by a handfull of member brokers. Transglobal Securities Ltd, Asset alliance Sec Pvt Ltd, Matrix Equitrade Pvt Ltd, OPG Sec Pvt Ltd, Latin Manharlal Sec Pvt ltd, Bhagwandas Girdhandas Finance were a few of the member brokers involved in the deals.
Apurva Shah, head of research, Prabhudas Lilladher Securities said, ?The bulk deals may be due to the unwinding of Indiabulls and Religare, which were involved in providing leverage to the promoters of Orchid and some brokers took advantage of this development. However, I think it was just an opportunistic move by these brokers rather than a strategic move, and the possibility of involvement of a few operators could not be ruled out?.
The Orchid stock, which had advanced by over 15% in the last trading session, fell by more than 3% on Wednesday, after witnessing a very volatile trading session, to settle at Rs 232.60, while Ranbaxy too closed the day in negative territory at Rs 470, down 0.07%.
On the BSE, Orchid was the top traded stock, with around 2.3 crore shares being traded at a turnover value of Rs 58.17 crore. Even on the derivatives segment, investors started to unwind their long positions on Wednesday, shedding around 8.2 lakh shares in its open interest (OI) 45 lakh shares. The April futures of the contract lost Rs 12.25 or 5.15% to end the day at Rs 225.54.