India's HDFC Bank to replace HDFC Ltd on MSCI indexes
India's biggest private lender HDFC Bank will replace Housing Development Finance Corp (HDFC) Ltd on MSCI Global Standard indexes from July 13, following the merger of two companies, an MSCI notice showed on Friday.
HDFC and HDFC Bank completed their $40 billion merger, the largest in India's corporate history on July 1 and have set July 13 as the "record date" for shareholders to swap HDFC's shares with those of HDFC Bank.
Reuters had reported in June that after the merger, the foreign shareholding in the combined entity would be at about 60%-62%, allowing the bank to be added to the MSCI index for the first time since 2013.
The share price of both companies slid in May after MSCI said that it would use an adjustment factor of 0.50 to compute the weightage of the merged entity, which Nuvama Research estimated would likely lead to a combined outflow of $150-$200 million.
Still, HDFC Bank's shares are up 2% so far this year, while HDFC's shares have gained 5%, but are both underperforming the blue-chip Nifty 50, which is up 6.8%.
