The massive slide in the shares of Yes Bank has resulted in the worth in hands of the bank’s founder Rana Kapoor reducing by a huge margin. As per last estimates, what was worth $1.4 billion just about a year ago is today valued at less than $400 million. This is the value of the 10% holding in Yes Bank that Rana Kapoor has retained.
The former CEO of the bank that he created and nurtured has publicly expressed an emotional attachment to the stake he is holding in Yes Bank. In a tweet put out in September 2018 Rana Kapoor had said he does not intend to ever liquidate his promoter holding of 10% in the bank and would leave it as his legacy to his three daughters and to their offspring. At that time, he might not have imagined that the Yes Bank shares will drop 78% in a span of 1 year. He had wished in that tweet that even shareholders should not be selling even a single share.
What could be more worrying for Kapoor and other Yes Bank shareholders is that the worst is yet to come, if analysts are to be believed. The next price target could be Rs 50, another 40% fall from current levels. Yes Bank’s stock closed on Thursday at around Rs 85 after hitting a 52-week low and continues to fall on Friday with the stock being down 2.16% at Rs 83.95 as of 10 17am.
The downward spiral of the bank’s shares is not a difficult phenomenon to understand. The circumstances leading to his ouster from the bank by the Reserve Bank on charges of not accounting for bad debts. In the years previous to that, the bank showed phenomenal growth under Rana Kapoor emerging as the fourth largest private sector bank in the country.
There is now a new CEO Ravneet Gill, who comes from Deutsche Bank and has to restore the bank’s finances and its reputation back to where it should be. If these do happen, the share price of Yes Bank may stage a recovery.