K.S. Badri Narayanan

FOR the third week in a row, US equities suffered as corporate majors such as EBay Inc and Qualcomm Inc announced disappointing forecasts. In addition, the resurging crude prices also had its impact on the markets. As a result, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.6 per cent to 10,392.99, the S &P-500 retreated 1.4 per cent to 1167.87 and the Nasdaq crashed 2.6 per cent to 2034.27.

The domestic markets too felt the global pressure, but it was the FIIs' indifferent attitude that kept them volatile. While the BSE Sensex gained 0.15 per cent, the NSE' S&P CNX Nifty shed 0.3 per cent.

The depressed sentiment also affected the Indian ADRs as except ICICI Bank all the other counters ended last week in the red. ICICI Bank announced a jump in net profit for the quarter ended December 2004 at Rs 517.68 crore against Rs 440.10 crore recorded in December 2003 quarter.

HDFC Bank, which plans to raise $260 million selling ADRs, has fixed the price at $39.26. Following this announcement, the ADR slipped marginally to $41.84 ($42).

After Infosys' impressive performance, Satyam and Wipro also followed suit; while Satyam's net zoomed to Rs 174.78 crore (Rs 145.87 crore) for the December quarter, Wipro's net went up 54 pc to Rs 376.5 crore (Rs 244.6 crore).

MTNL's announcement that its board (on January 29) is considering giving free shares and a mid-year dividend seemed to have revived the sentiment for it. But that was not enough for it to end the week in positive territory as MTNL ended a tad weak at $7.02 ($7.07). VSNL reported a drop in net profit at Rs 142.30 crore (Rs 180.9 crore); the ADR finished weak at $20.95 ($21.18).

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