MCX promoter Financial Technologies India Ltd (FTIL), which has been under regulatory glare, announced here on Wednesday that it had exited the company by selling its remaining five per cent stake in the market.
“Without prejudice to legal rights and remedies, the company has sold its balance 5 per cent equity shares of MCX in the market and with this, the company holds no stake in the bourse,” FTIL said in a statement here.
The company did not disclose the value of the proceeds nor the number of shares sold. The MCX counter closed 5.08 per cent up at Rs.856.85 on the BSE, taking its marker cap to Rs.4,370 crore on Wednesday.
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Earlier, MCX said commodity market regulator Forward Markets Commission (FMC) had okayed the 15 per cent stake sale to Kotak Mahindra Bank last month for Rs.459 crore.
In the same month, billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala also picked up 1.96 per cent in MCX from FTIL, in a block deal, for Rs.66 crore.
The exit follows the December, 2013, FMC order and SEBI’s March, 2014, order, both of which said that Jignesh Shah and his firm FTIL were not ‘fit and proper’ to run any exchange in the country, and could not hold more than 2 per cent stake in any bourse.
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Mr. Shah, who was in jail until last week, from early May, for his alleged role in the Rs.5,600-crore scam in group company NSEL, founded the Multi-Commodity Exchange or MCX in November, 2003, and then went on to set up a stock exchange this year called MCX-SX.