Spurs bull run on bourses

Mumbai: BSE Sensex vaulted 1,335 points, while NSE Nifty shot past the 18,000-mark on Monday, fuelled by index heavyweights HDFC twins, which soared almost 10 per cent after announcing corporate India's biggest merger. India's largest housing finance company HDFC Ltd will merge with the country's top private lender HDFC Bank to create a banking behemoth with a combined balance sheet of about Rs17.87 lakh crore. The announcement triggered robust buying in these two counters as well as other banking and financial stocks. FMCG, IT and metal stocks too saw heavy demand.

The 30-share BSE Sensex darted up 1,335.05 points or 2.25 per cent to close at an over two-month high of 60,611.74. Likewise, the broader NSE Nifty jumped 382.95 points or 2.17 per cent to 18,053.40.

HDFC Bank and HDFC led the Sensex gainers' chart, advancing 9.97 per cent and 9.30 per cent, respectively. The other gainers included Kotak Bank, HUL, L&T, IndusInd Bank, Sun Pharma and Tata Steel. Only two names closed in the red -- Infosys and Titan, slipping up to 1.05 per cent.

"The merger of HDFC with HDFC Bank is an unprecedented mega-merger which will benefit all stakeholders. The shareholders of both entities stand to benefit substantially, as already reflected by the sharp up moves in their stock prices. For shareholders, this is far better than a buyback at higher prices. This mega-merger will correct the recent underperformance of the HDFC twins. From the valuation perspective, the HDFC twins are even now only attractively priced in a highly valued market. The Indian economy will benefit from larger investment by the merged entity in large infra projects.