Madhu Kannan Ex-Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer BSE Ltd.   20th January 2010

Over the past 135 years, BSE has facilitated the growth of the Indian corporate sector by providing it with an efficient access to resources. There is perhaps no major corporate in India which has not sourced BSE's services in raising resources from the capital market. This has included almost all the PSUs.

BSE today has the highest number of companies listed on its platform in the world and its website is the most visited website among the exchange websites. Its benchmark index-S&P-BSE-SENSEX-has been the barometer of the Indian stock market since 1986.

BSE is the only exchange in the country to have a dedicated PSU index called the S&P BSE PSU Index that tracks the performance of the PSUs that are listed with it. This move has helped to create greater visibility for this sector as a special investible sector. 

Today, even though BSE has over 4900 listed companies, the 76 PSUs (including 44 CPSEs) constitute over 30% of the overall market capitalization of the companies listed with it. The overall market cap of this PSU asset class is over Rs.18 lakh crores and continues to grow as we see greater activity by the Government and the PSUs to access the public equity market. 

PSUs have the potential for even a more dominant role, with a large number of profitable unlisted CPSEs that can go to the market and for the already listed ones to offer more floating stock. 

bsepsu.com – a new web-based initiative by the BSE has been created to generate greater awareness and information sharing among the PSUs and the government as also among investors and market participants that follow the PSU Disinvestment process. By launching this new service, we, at BSE, are looking forward to working with the government, the PSUs, its advisors and most importantly its investors, both current and potential, to create a central repository of high quality useful information. 

bsepsu.com is India's first website covering detailed information and data on all aspects of disinvestments. This website would also be useful to academicians, researchers, investors as well as any person or organization, including the media, having an interest in this subject. 

BSE is looking forward to an exciting period of listing and trading of PSU stocks, and bringing in millions of new investors. 

Madhu Kannan