Five X is yet to be listed on the BSE after more than a year, leaving angry investors stranded

Shareholders in Octant Industries have been enduring an agonising wait, for more than a year, for listing of the demerged entity—Five X Finance and Investment (Five X).

For those unfamiliar with the dilemma, on 7 December 2010, Octant Industries, erstwhile Octant Interactive Technologies (OIT), had demerged its financial division business and vested 80% of its capital in this division known as Five X. The remaining 20% is vested with Octant Industries.

In other words, if an investor held Rs100 in OIT, Rs80 is vested in Five X while Rs20 will be held in Octant Industries. You can see that the bulk of the investors’ savings is held by Five X, which is yet to be listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). 80% of the investors’ hard-earned money has been stuck for more than a year now. The peculiar thing is that Octant Industries, which got only 20% capital, successfully listed on 7 February 2011, just two months after the demerger announcement. Soon after being relisted in its new avatar, the stock hit a high of Rs28.90 and now is quoting at Rs10.49.

Initially, investors had to wait eight months for the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to give its nod to go ahead with the Five X listing. Now they are waiting a further four months for BSE’s approval. One could safely assume that our regulators and institutions are holding investors at a ransom through unnecessary delays.

We first broke the story on 22 July 2011 (http://www.moneylife.in/article/post-de-merger-octant-interactive-shareholders-still-await-listing-of-spun-off-business/18317.html). After three months of this story, on 2 September 2011, SEBI had given its approval to go ahead with Five X listing. Now the ball is in BSE’s court to give the approval. We also had earlier written about BSE’s strange decision to list Octant Industries but not Five X (http://www.moneylife.in/article/bse-delays-five-x-listing-investors-capital-still-stuck-in-company/20811.html). Why is Five X taking longer than usual?

When we tried to dig some information about Girraj Kishor Agrawal, the director and signatory of Five X, we found out that he was director of the companies which were implicated for wrong-doings in the past. For instance, Mr Agrawal was the managing director of a company, Socrus Bio Sciences, which had flouted SEBI regulations for incorrectly reporting its shareholding pattern. SEBI had fined the company Rs1 lakh for the transgression without implicating its managing director. The order can be found here.

Additionally, Mr Agrawal is also involved in Banas Finance in the capacity as a director, which failed to comply with BSE listing agreement on 30 November 2007.

Interestingly, according to a recent filing with BSE, Octant Industries is planning a preferential issue for Rs13 crore, which is nearly 70% of its current equity capital. The company has planned to convene an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) to consider and pass this proposal on 9 February 2012, wherein the funds raised will be used for an “ongoing power project and to meet the financial institution requirements.”

The filing states:

“Octant Industries Ltd has informed BSE that the board of directors of the company at its meeting held on January 09, 2012, have considered and approved the proposal of Further Issue of Equity shares to the extent of Rupees Thirteen Crores on Preferential Issue basis in compliance with the provisions of SEBI (Issue of Capital & Disclosure Requirement) Regulations, 2009 and other related regulations. “

While Octant Industries is busy trying to raising capital at the behest of its owners, the very same shareholders are being quietly ignored while their hard-earned money is stuck with Five X. Is the management of Five X intentionally scuppering the chances of being listed? Being shareholders, is it not their right to know what is going on?

Despite repeated request to ask BSE for their views, we received no response at time of publishing this story.