L&T is fast inching towards touching the 26 per cent shareholding threshold in Mindtree, as the engineering firm on Wednesday bought an additional 2.29 per cent stake worth Rs 368.4 crore through open market transaction. With this round of buying, total holding of L&T reached 23.92 per cent in the Bengaluru-headquartered IT services company.

Construction major L&T on Tuesday bought shares worth about Rs 143.70 crore of Mindtree through open market transactions.

According to the bulk deal data available with the NSE, the firm bought over 1.46 million shares, which is 0.89 per cent of Mindtree's share base, at an average price of Rs 979.93 a share. L&T on Monday purchased over 1.15 million shares worth around Rs 113 crore of Mindtree thorough the similar route. After these transactions, the current holding of L&T in Mindtree stands at 21.63 per cent.

Larsen and Toubro Ltd on Tuesday formalized its stake purchase in Mindtree Ltd from Café Coffee Day (CCD) founder V.G. Siddhartha and two CCD affiliate firms for ₹3,218.32 crore and is now looking to buy at least 6% more from the open market within a week.

A 26% stake in Mindtree will entitle L&T to get a dividend income of ₹102 crore.

L&T Finance Holdings, an arm of engineering major L&T, on Sunday reported a net profit of Rs 552 crore in Q4FY19, a 94% year-on-year growth. The profit rose on account of a 22.5% increase y-o-y in its total income. The net profit was Rs 270 crore in Q4FY18.

Total income came in at Rs 3,383.9 crore, up 22.5% y-o-y pushed up by a higher interest income, which rose by 25.5% to Rs 3,058 crore. The net interest margin rose by 44 basis points y-o-y to 5.08%.

A sharp rally in three private sector banks – HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank – that have gained over 10 per cent each from their August 29, 2018 level helped the benchmark index S&P BSE Sensex breeze past the 39,000 mark and hit a new high on Monday. The benchmark index surpassed its previous high of 38,990 recorded on August 29, 2018 in intra-day deals.

The Nifty50, too, breached the 11,700 level for the first time since September 2018 to hit an intra-day high of 11,716.

Infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro Ltd (L&T) Monday said it has won a gas export pipeline contract from Kuwait Oil Company (KOC).

The company said the order falls under "large" category that range between Rs 2,500 crore and Rs 5,000 crore as per its classification of contracts.

The corporate battle between L&T and Mindtree entered the next phase on Tuesday with the construction-to-engineering major issuing a public statement on its open offer, which will start on May 14, while the board of the Bengaluru-headquartered firm decided to drop its buyback plan.

After its previous board meeting on March 20, the Mindtree board informed the exchanges it would constitute a committee of independent directors to evaluate the open offer proposal of L&T.

Larsen & Toubro’s move to scale up in IT miscomputes. The Indian engineering-to-financial services conglomerate, led by AM Naik, has initiated a hostile bid for control of Mindtree, valuing the Mumbai-listed outsourcer at 155 billion rupees ($2.2 billion). Yet the suitor’s promise to run the outfit independently, outside its existing IT businesses, undermines the whole venture.

Shares of Larsen & Toubro (L&T) rose 3 per cent to Rs 1,415 in intra-day trade on Friday, extending their Wednesday gain on the BSE, even as brokerages firm maintain ‘buy’ rating on the stock after the company proposed to acquire IT firm Mindtree.

The stock is 3 per cent away from its 52-week high price of Rs 1,459 that it hit on December 21, 2018, in intra-day trade. It touched an all-time high of Rs 1,470 on February 1, 2018, on the BSE.

Even as Larsen and Toubro (L&T) on Tuesday tried to play down the nature of its move to take over technology firm Mindtree, promoters of the latter refused to budge from their stand, terming the move hostile, unprecedented, and unexplainable. They maintained that the culture of the two companies are not aligned.

Addressing newspersons on Tuesday, L&T MD & CEO SN Subrahmanyan said what they are trying to do is with pyaar (love) and will continue to look at it as something they are doing from dil (heart).

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