Promoters now own 42% of NSE-listed companies, a 3-year high

MUMBAI: The total shareholding of private promoters in NSE-listed companies has been moving northwards for the last two quarters, and at nearly 42%, it is now at a three-year high. The rise in aggregate holding by these promoters came after a secular fall in their holding from Dec 2021 till March 2026, an analysis by an arm of Prime Database showed. A rising promoter shareholding trend often indicates that the market is bottoming out. The analysis by primeinfobase.com also showed that the share of mutual funds (MFs) in companies listed on NSE reached yet another all-time high of 11.8% on Sept 30 this year, up from 11.6% on June 30, its 13th consecutive quarter of rise. According to Pranav Haldea, MD, Prime Database Group, this is a further sign of individual investors being convinced that mutual funds are the right investment vehicle for them. In the MF space, over the past several years, monthly gross inflows into various schemes of fund houses have been on a rising trend with the current figure at about Rs 31,000 crore, taking the latest monthly average over the last year to about Rs 30,000 crore. Haldea feels that despite markets being broadly range-bound over the last couple of years, it will be interesting to see if retail investors would continue their faith in mutual funds and keep pumping in about Rs 30,000 crore on a monthly basis through systematic investment plans (SIPs). In contrast to the rise in holdings by mutual funds, as on Sept 30, the share of foreign institutional investors (FIIs) in Indian companies further declined to a 14-year low of 15.6%, from 15.9% the previous quarter. MFs raising their stakes in Indian companies consistently and FIIs cutting back also led to narrowing the holdings-level gap between foreign funds and domestic fund houses. As of Sept 30, this gap was 3.8%.