United Breweries loses the fizz

United Breweries has been having one volatile ride. Yesterday, the stock price surged to almost 1410 and today it is down in the red, going down 1.5% to Rs.1339. Clearly, there is a reversal in trend as it has fallen today after 2 days of consecutive gain.

Yesterday, the jubilation was on news that Heineken, the largest shareholder of United Breweries, has acquired shares in the company, via a bulk deal in the BSE. It has acquired 74.05 lakh shares at a price of Rs.1361.35/share, amounting to Rs.1008 crore. Post this, Heineken’s stake will rise from 43.73% to 46.53%.

And the news today is that the Enforcement Directorate has recovered Rs.1,008 crore by selling the shares of United Breweries, this also happened yesterday. This is in line with the enforcement agency’s attempts to recover dues from Vijay Mallya, the fugitive economic offender, by liquidating his assets in India. The shares of UBL put on sale belonged to Mallya and had been offered as a collateral for loans.

Effectively, the 74,04,932 equity shares of the company, constituting 2.80% of the total issued and paid-up equity share capital, have been sold at around Rs.1,361.25/share.