India’s Yes Bank Ltd, the world’s worst-performing bank share in 2019, has posted the globe’s biggest gain over the past month.
Its shares have rallied about 74% — the biggest gain among global peers valued at more than $1bn — in the last one month after embattled founder Rana Kapoor was forced to sell his holdings in October and a new management team promised fresh capital and lower bad loans. The surge helped pare the annual loss in the Mumbai-based lender’s shares to 60%.
Yes Bank rose 6% as of 3:21pm in Mumbai yesterday, the biggest gainer on the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex index.
The recovery will be a relief for new chief executive officer Ravneet Gill, who’s been courting investors to revive the bank. India’s billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala this month bought shares of Yes Bank, after the lender announced a binding offer from an unidentified global investor to inject $1.2bn.
Gill is rushing to raise funds. Latest results released this month show Yes Bank swung to a loss in the September quarter and its bad-loan ratio rose.
“Capital is of utmost importance to the bank and we want the money to be in the bank by December,” Gill told reporters after the results. “Once we get the capital it will run us for 24 months.”