Mumbai, Nov. 18: The telecom scandal has also been echoing in the stock markets over the past few days as the stock price of Reliance Communications and Unitech has been hammered.
On Thursday, the stock prices of the two firms were down over 4 per cent each on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
The two counters had also been beaten down on Tuesday, when the CAG report was first tabled in the Parliament.
A smaller telecom firm, HFCL also saw a sharp fall in its price. Interestingly, the stock price of two other large listed telecos — Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular, was up on Thursday. Reliance Communications has been trying to distance itself from the controversy, but the markets don’t seem to be buying it.
The Anil Ambani group firm on Thursday said that RCom doesn’t hold any of the 85 licences issued in January 2008 that CAG in its report has said lack basic eligibility.
He admitted however that RCom through its 100 per cent subsidiary Reliance Telecom, was a 9.9 per cent equity shareholder in Swan Telecom.
This however was only till December 5, 2007 he said, while Swan was granted LOI only on January 10, 2008.
He said the issue of license validity and spectrum priority of Swan Telecom is not relevant for RCom’s operations.
The stocks of both these companies are expected to go down another 5-10 per cent and then bounce back said Mr Kishore Ostwal of CNI Research.