Who are buyers of ITC shares in nearly Rs 17,500 crore block deals?

ITC shares were bought by a dozen of institutional investors, the biggest being ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund. Government of Singapore, Capital Group, HDFC Mutual Fund, UTI Mutual Funds, Mirae Asset Mutual Fund, Peoples Bank of China and International Monetary Fund were all buyers of ITC shares in the Rs 17,485 crore block deals.

Other buyers included HSBC Global Fund, Kuwait Investment Authority, ICICI Bank, Goldman Sachs, Max Life Insurance Company, among others. The shares were bought at Rs 400.25 per share. ITC shares eventually settled Wednesday's session at Rs 422.40, up 4.49 per cent. The stock is still down 9.84 per cent year-to-date.

As per data compiled from BSE, ICICI Prudential bought Rs 4,963.10 crore worth ITC shares in 16 block deals. It was followed by the Government of Singapore purchased shares worth Rs 3,664.11 crore in one block deal.

The US-based Capital Group bought ITC shares worth at Rs 1,063.94 crore in seven block deals. BofA Securities (Rs 817 crore), Société Generale (Rs 734 crore) and Citigroup (Rs 702 crore) were some other key buyers in BAT's stake sale.

"We remain constructive on the company from a medium to long term perspective owing to its strong brand recall and enormous runway for its FMCG business ahead. With inflation expected to moderate further ahead, especially the rural side, we expect volumes in the overall business to come back as we move forward. At the current valuation, we believe that most of the negatives are already priced in and investors could start considering adding the stock to their portfolio at every dip," said Manish Chowdhury, Head of Research, StoxBox.

Abhilash Pagaria of Nuvama Institutional Equities said the move would lead to $105 million inflows into domestic indices. He expects Expect a $65 million inflow, equal to 13 million shares, with a 0.9-day volume impact. For Sensex, as per Nuvama Alternative math, $38 million worth inflows are likely, which is 7.7 million shares, with a 0.5-day volume impact.