Foreign Inflows So Far In June Driven By Buying In HDFC Bank 

Foreign buying in HDFC Bank Ltd. has driven overseas inflows so far this month even though investors didn’t exactly rush in to increase their holding in the private lender as expected.

Foreign portfolio investors net bought Rs 2,434 crore worth of equities from June 4 to 7, according to data released by National Securities Depository Ltd. They acquired HDFC Bank’s shares worth Rs 2,780 crore alone during the period. Data for June 8 (Friday) wasn’t available as depositories disclose it with a day’s lag.

From June 1, Indian exchanges switched to real-time monitoring of foreign holding instead of maintaining a 2 percent buffer below the cap. That opened up a headroom to acquire 1.68 percent stake worth about Rs 9,000 crore in HDFC Bank, according to data released by NSDL on June 2. The limit shrunk to 1.15 percent on June 7, indicating that foreign holding in the lender rose by 0.52 percent in four days.

The bank continues to be in the red-flag list—indicating that overseas investors’ stake in the lender is within 3 percentage points of the 74 percent cap.

Meanwhile, 11 companies, including seven prominent ones, have breached foreign holding caps.