The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has expelled one more brokerage, namely, Stampede Capital Ltd, which is a listed entity. A senior official from NSE has confirmed this.
In a notification, NSE says, "All members are hereby informed that the following trading member has been expelled from the membership of the Exchange under Rules 1 and 2 of Chapter IV of the NSEIL Rules from 14 July 2021 before market hours."
NSE also disqualified 140 authorised persons associated with Stampede Capital from holding the office of a director or partner in a company or firm. This includes Parameshwar Botla, Jonna Venkata Tirupati Rao, Shaik Haseena, Naveen Parashar, Srinivas Maya and Anil Thakur, all directors of the brokerage.
According to the company shareholding as of 31 March 2021, Jonna Venkata Tirupati Rao and Gayi Adi Management and Trends Pvt Ltd are majority shareholders from the promoter and promoter group with a stake of 0.17% and 42.62%, respectively, in the brokerage.
While the promoter and promoter group hold a 42.79% stake in Stampede Capital, about 8,492 public shareholders, including 8,200 individuals, hold the rest 57.21% stake.
Stampede Capital, promoted by technocrat Meenvalli Venkat Srinivas, caught attention from many big shots, including the Big-B of Bollywood, Amitabh Bachchan himself. In fact, in May 2014, Mr Bachchan picked up 1.1 lakh shares of the brokerage Stampede Capital for an estimated Rs1.21 crore through the open market.
According to a
report from the Hindu BusinessLine, "the shares were purchased at an average price of Rs109.92, valuing the transaction at Rs1.21 crore. Shares of Stampede Capital have shot up more than 30% within a month."
However, an August 2015 blog post from rakesh-jhunjhunwala.in terms Mr Bachchan's investment in Stampede Capital as
'Big B Burns Fingers In Quest For Mega Bucks From Dubious Micro-Cap'. The post says, "Amitabh Bachchan, the doyen of Bollywood, appears to have developed a special liking for Venkata Srinivas Meenavalli, the technocrat – promoter of two companies called Stampede Capital and Ziddu.com (Meridian Tech Pte Ltd). While Stampede is an Indian company, Ziddu/ Meridian is a Singapore-based company. Amitabh Bachchan has invested large sums of money in both companies. Amitabh holds 779,609 shares in Stampede Capital as of 30 June 2015. This constitutes 3.42% of Stampede’s total capital."
"The stock touched an all-time high of Rs800 on 06.08.2015. Since then, it has been on a freefall and is breaching successive lower circuits. At the CMP of Rs. 366, there is a loss of more than 50% in just a couple of weeks. Fortunately, Big B is still in the green because his purchase price ranges from Rs84 to Rs127. However, if he is spotted anywhere close to Dalal Street seeking to peddle off his holding in Stampede Capital, the sky will fall on the Company! So, we have to watch and see which way the investments in Stampede and Ziddu turn out for Amitabh Bachchan," the post says.
According to data from BSE, till the September 2020 quarter, Mr Bachchan held a 1.26% stake in Stampede Capital. However, he may have either cut down his stake or sold it out as his name does not figure in the list of public shareholders with share capital in excess of Rs2 lakh during the December 2020 quarter shareholding report.
As of the March 2016 quarter, the Superstar held 74.62 lakh shares or a 3.27% stake in the brokerage. However, over the next few quarters, he started cutting down his stake to 1.26% till March 2018. From that quarter onwards, his stake remained the same till September 2020 quarter, the data from BSE shows.
Last week, Meenvalli Venkat Srinivas and Meenavalli Usha Rani, both promoters of Stampede Capital, had requested reclassifying their shareholding from the promoter and promoter group category to the public category.
Trading in Stamped Capital is restricted on BSE as it is at stage 4 under graded surveillance measure (GSM). On NSE, Stamped Capital is trading in LT-ASM-STAGE I category. At 13.00 hours it was trading 3.92% down at Rs2.45 on NSE, while the benchmark Nifty was marginally higher at 15,864.80 points.
You may also want to read...
Is there any chance regular shares can come out of regulatory issues?
Is there any chance of this regular share coming out of GSM stage 4 in the near future?