

HDFC Bank falls on governance rumours: an opportunity or a warning?
overreaction, with fundamentals remaining largely intact, it is a clear signal to buy. Otherwise, the downside looks pretty steep.
Let’s discuss.Banks have featured among the largest losers amid this month’s selloff. A bulk of the correction has been driven by foreign investor outflows worth over ₹1 trillion, triggered by higher yields and a weaker rupee that have sparked a risk-off sentiment.
And with banks being heavyweights in broad market indices, they have borne the brunt of the exodus.Even as banks in general are rate-sensitive and suffer when rates rise, public sector banks with their higher shares of treasuries tend to be hit harder. Coupled with profit-booking at record highs, that is exactly what transpired: the Nifty PSU Bank Index declined almost 15% over the past month, while private banks’ fall was arrested at less than 12%.HDFC was an outlier among private banks, with a fall that matched that of PSU banks.
To be sure, the stock had only recently started recovering on the back of signs that the merger overhang was finally lifting, and the bank’s margins were recovering after a long wait. The sharp drop in sentiment this month has pulled down the stock’s five-year CAGR to near-zero.When Chakraborty stepped down from his position as the non-executive chairman a couple of weeks back, he flagged that “certain happenings and practices within the bank” over the last two years didn’t sit right with his personal values and ethics.
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