Moneycontrol exclusive: IIFL may demerge institutional arm
Nirmal Jain-promoted IIFL (formerly India Infoline Ltd) is considering a proposal to demerge its institutional broking business and sell a strategic stake in that entity, according to market sources. IIFL is learnt to have sounded out a couple of potential strategic investors on this.
May 27, 2011 / 03:37 PM IST
Santosh Nair
MoneycontrolNirmal Jain-promoted IIFL (formerly India Infoline Ltd) is considering a proposal to demerge its institutional broking business and sell a strategic stake in that entity, according to market sources. IIFL is learnt to have sounded out a couple of potential strategic investors on this.Talk of a stake sale in IIFL has been doing the rounds for nearly a year now, and the company has always denied it. In a terse e-mail response to a moneycontrol.com questionnaire on the subject, Jain said, "Deny all. Baseless."Market players say domestic brokerages in general will increasingly find it difficult to compete with global investment banks for a share of foreign institutional investor (FII) business, unless they have a bigger balance sheet.Like most other domestic brokerages, IIFL's broking income too has been under pressure for the past few quarters, as overall trading volumes in the stock market have shrunk.For FY11, the company
