Tag: mercator

The impact of scams is always felt in the stock markets.For instance, in the 2G scam, stocks like Unitech,DB Realty, RCom etc were hammered out of shape.

The recent controversy over coal allocations is interesting from a stock market perspective.

If the coal allocations are cancelled, the list of losers is a long one (see here and here)

But will there be any winners?If a shortage of domestic coal looms,then imports of thermal coal will increase.India’s Coal import has touched 140 Mio MT in FY 12, representing a 50% jump over 86 Mio MT imported last year. Of the total imports, 90 Mio MT would be Thermal Coal.

So pure play importers of thermal coal could turn out to be big winners of the Coalgate scam.

One of the listed players in this field is Mercator.While I had blogged earlier about the shenanigans of their promoters,it seems like a good candidate to ride the thermal coal import wave.

(Disclaimer:Buy/Sell at your own risk and don’t chew my a** if it doesn’t work out !!)

Mercator Ltd in its Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) held on Oct 28, 2010 issued 1.88 Crore warrants to its promoters and persons acting in concert.Each warrant gave the holder the right to convert it into one share of Mercator Ltd by May 08, 2012

The warrants were priced at Rs.55 per warrant.This, despite the fact, that the prevailing price of Mercator then was around Rs.67 per share.This made the warrants in the money from Day 1 and caused corporate governance misgivings.

Since then, Mercator stock has crashed to around Rs.20.25 per share.Not surprisingly, the promoters have chickened out and have not exercised their option to convert the warrants to shares .As a result, their application money (around 23 Crores) has been forfeited.

The Gods surely have a good sense of humor.