Satyam pulls market down

A day after market had recovered from its previous losses, the news of fraud at Satyam and the resignation of its chairman, B Ramalinga Raju sent the index into a tailspin on the second last day of the trading week. Riding on the back of yesterday's smart recovery and an overnight gains in the US market, Sensex rallied past the 10,400 mark to commence at 10,424, up 89 points from its last close. Extended buying in most of the counters lifted the index to a new intra-day high of 10,470 in early trades. However the news from Satyam’s end pushed the index deep into the red by late morning trades. While the slide continued unabated, the index plunged further into the red to slip below the 9,600 mark and touch an intra-day low of 9,510 from the day's high. Sensex concluded the session with a sharp drop of 749 points at 9,587, while Nifty declined 192 points to close at 2,920.

In the broader market, losers outpaced gainers. Of the 2,582 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,111 stocks declined, whereas only 414 stocks advanced. Fifty seven stocks ended unchanged. BSE Realty was the worst hit among sectoral indices, losing 16.70% followed by BSE IT (down 9.29%), BSE Oil & Gas (down 9.27%), BSE Bankex (down 8.16%) and BSE Teck (down 7.85%).

Pulling the market, Satyam Computer Services (Satyam) tanked 77.16% at Rs40.90, JP Associates crashed 29.70% at Rs70.90, Reliance Communications shed 17.42% at Rs205.50, DLF declined 17.08% at Rs232, Reliance Infrastructure lost 13.25% at Rs561.20, Reliance Industries slipped 12.29% at Rs1,199.90 and ICICI Bank dropped 11.31% at Rs464. Among other major losers Larsen & Toubro dipped 9.49% at Rs768, Tata Motors slipped by 7.49% at Rs171.80 and Ranbaxy Laboratories was down 7.46% at Rs234.55. Mahindra & Mahindra, HDFC Bank, ACC, Hindalco Industries, State Bank of India, Tata Steel, ONGC and ITC were down 3.85% each. Select counters, however, bucked the downtrend. Hindustan Unilever advanced 1.44% at Rs250.20 while Infosys, Maruti Suzuki India and Wipro were up with steady gains.

Over 14.27 crore shares of Satyam changed hands on BSE followed by Suzlon Energy (3.08 crore shares), Unitech (2.87 crore shares), JP Associates (2.84 crore shares) and Reliance Natural Resources (1.92 crore shares).