At 3.10 p.m., the Sensex was down 40.11 points at 15,824.75. The Nifty was down by 15.80 points at 4,756.35.
Intially the market was above the 16 K mark on the announcement by the SBI Chairman that the bank’s financial position is “satisfactory”, the Sensex which was till then moving in a range, picked up by more than 70 points to trade above the 16000-levels.
The Sensex was up by almost one percent to trade at 16005.14. The NSE Nifty was also up by one percent trading at 4812.50.
“The medium to long-term position of the bank is satisfactory. The rating downgrade from C+ to D+ by Moody’s of the perpetual debt issuances of the bank brings the bank at par with other nationalised banks. Also, according to the Basel III norms, these instruments which were rated no longer qualify for tier-I capital,” said Mr. Pratip Chaudhuri, Chairman, SBI.
He also added that the bank would no longer make any perpetual debt issuances and would only give loans to companies with higher ratings and therefore lowered capital requirements.
However, SBI continued to be the worst performer among the Sensex stocks, down by 2.24 percent.
Most of the Sensex stocks were up, except for the banking stocks, along with RIL (-0.01 percent) and Maruti (-0.55 percent). HDFC bank was down 0.40 percent and ICICI by 1.65 percent.