Mkts crash: Blue-chips lead from front

Mumbai: Shares of Indian blue-chip companies tumbled all the way into the red on Wednesday, even as the market benchmark index fell by 388 points on the back of adverse global cues.

The industry leaders from across the sectors, including banking, energy, steel, energy, tobacco, cement, pharma and capital goods, lost considerable ground on the back of weak trends in global equity and commodity markets and surge in global crude oil prices.

The cumulative market capitalisation of the 30 companies present on the Sensex dropped by nearly Rs 48,000 crore to Rs 12,92,241.17 crore.

The total investor wealth, measured in terms of combined market cap of all companies listed on BSE, went down by Rs 93,254.80 crore to Rs 2,842,049.23 crore.

Grasim Industries, a Sensex constituent, moved out of the top-30 list in terms of market cap on the BSE, as the company's market cap went down by 5.52 per cent to Rs 16,249.15 crore. The company was replaced by real estate major Unitech in the list.

Tata Motors was the only scrip on the 30-share barometer index that managed to barely miss the red mark in a trading session marked with 675-point intraday fall.

Tobacco major ITC, private banking major ICICI Bank, steel major Tata Steel, public-sector energy giant ONGC, conglomerate Grasim Industries, engineering and construction major L&T and pharma major Cipla all registered losses of 5 per cent to 6.5 per cent.

Today's sharp plunge also shrugged off an upward revision to the GDP growth figure for 2005-06.

Among other major blue-chip scrips, housing finance major HDFC and IT majors Wipro and TCS, Reliance Energy and auto majors Hero Honda and Maruti Udyog also ended more than 4 per cent down.

As many as 29 scrips from the Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensitive Index lost ground, while Tata Motors managed to close 0.19 per cent up at Rs 789.70, after hitting an intraday low of Rs 742.

However, ten scrips on the broader BSE-100 index managed to close higher, with Reliance Capital, Glenmark Pharma, Raymond and Jindal Steel managing gains of 1 per cent to 4 per cent.

The recovery from lower levels in the benchmark Sensex in afternoon trade was mostly driven by fresh buying in index heavyweights Reliance Industries and ONGC.

RIL closed 0.20 per cent down at Rs 953.25, after hitting an intraday low of Rs 918.60, while ONGC settled 5.63 per cent down at Rs 1,112.65 after plunging to as low as Rs 1,052.05.

Oil exploration major ONGC plunged sharply on the back of reports that the company might have to share a large subsidy burden of PSU oil marketing companies.