Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Thursday said it did not find evidence of manipulative trading in ICICI Bank shares, which had demanded a probe by the regulator after its share price came under heavy selling pressure in September.
Sebi said in a statement issued on Thursday, ?Sebi continues its surveillance of the stock exchange trading in various securities. It did not find evidence of manipulative trading in the ICICI Bank shares during the period between September 8 to October 10.?
ICICI Bank had in a letter dated September 17, 2008 made a complaint to Sebi that ?a malicious rumour is being spread to the effect that some of the top management have been selling ICICI Bank shares for the last few days.? The price of the shares of the bank fell 12.5% from Rs 640 on Sep 15 to Rs 560.30 on Sep 17, 2008.
Sebi said by and large the trading patterns are consistent with the shareholding pattern of ICICI Bank with predominant holdings by foreign institutional investors (FII), the general buying and selling behavior by FIIs and the broad movements of the market during this period.
The regulator analysed the trading pattern of ICICI Bank shares from September 8 to October 10 this year following the complaint by the country?s largest private sector bank. Sebi statement also said that there was no pattern observed regarding the placement of successive orders at lower price by sellers to hammer down the price. There was no pattern observed of booking intraday profits by major clients or brokers during this period.
Sebi said prices of ICICI Bank shares fell 49.52% from Rs 720.45 on September 8 to Rs 363.65 on October 10 this year. In its analysis, Sebi said none of the major sellers were observed to be placing orders successively at lower price.