Bharti Airtel CEO Sells Shares in the Firm

Bharti Airtel's, chief executive Manoj Kohli says that he will remain as joint-CEO and MD of the firm despite selling the bulk of his shareholding in the firm. Mr Kohli unexpectedly sold 123,000 shares through open market transactions in two tranches data from the stock exchange showed, leading to a 5% drop in the share price when the news was made public. He says that he has retained options on 180,000 shares though.

"The market is worried why all of a sudden the CEO had to sell his holding," R.K. Gupta, managing director at Taurus Asset Management told the local Economic Times newspaper.

A Bharti official said Kohli had sold the shares for personal reasons, which included to buy property. The sale occurred just days after the regulator announced plans to slash the termination rates the network operators are allowed to charge.

The share sale, which represented just 0.006% of Bharti's total equity, would have raised around US$1.3 million.

Bharti Airtel ended last year with around 85.7 million customers, based on figures from the Mobile World database - making it the country's largest operator.

 

Posted to the site on 12th March 2009