Nifty listless; Hotel Leela up 9%, Kingfisher rises 5%

Moneycontrol Bureau

The benchmarks opened listless and on expected lines as global cues dried up and domestic earnings floundered. The largecap space was pushed down by sell-off in TCS, Coal India, Tata Motors, HDFC Bank, and ITC. HUL, Cipla, BHEL, Sterlite, Mahindra and Mahindra, DLF were lending support to the indices.

At 09.34 AM, the Sensex was up barely 2 points at 19503.11, and the Nifty plummeted 2.50 points at 5895.70.

In the midcap segment, Hotel Leela opened with a big gap-up on news that Reliance Industries has bought its IT park building in Chennai. The stock shot up 9 percent to trade at Rs 26.80. Sugar space too opened in the positive with Balrampur Chini, Shree Renuka Sugars, Sakthi Sugars etc trading with over 1 percent gains.

Investors cheered  Kingfisher Airlines and United Breweries after the UB management agreed to accommodate further lending to debt-laden KFA by hiking its loan limit from Rs 300 crore to Rs 750 crore. Kingfisher raced up 5 percent and United Breweries moved up nearly 4 percent.

Wishlists coming in from various sectors and associations suggest that investors will build-up some stock specific position ahead of the outcome of the Union Budget.

Meanwhile, The euro declined against the dollar on Monday after the European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said economic indicators signaled further weakness in the euro zone.