All major Tata companies’ stocks have outperformed the Sensex, the barometer of the Indian capital markets, over the past two weeks from october 5 to 19.

While 30-share BSE Sensex grew, during the period, by 7.25 per cent from 2812.90 to 3016.84 scrips of the Tata Companies - namely Tata Tea, Tata Engineering, Tata Steel, Tata Finance, Tata Power and Tata Engineering - went up by from 8.11 per cent to as much as 39.24 per cent. Only exception is Tata Chemicals which recorded a price growth of 4.35 per cent. Analysts said the reason could be that fortune hunters are picking up stocks at “prevailing rock bottom prices” which did not indicate the potential of the companies.

Rumours doing the rounds in the capital market suggested that the promoters could be hiking their stakes, which varied in the range of 17.88 per cent (in Tata Finance) to 32.36 per cent (in Tata Finance), the Tatas hold 26.4 per cent stake in Tisco, 25.65 per cent in Tata Engineering; 29.64 per cent in Tata Tea and 30.21 per cent in tata Chemicals. An analyst said the perception that the Tatas might scale up their holding in the group companies gained momentum as these shares started upward movements after October 5, the day the news that Sebi would consider the proposals of rising the creeping acquisition limit from 5 per cent to 10 per cent came to light.

The Tatas have been scaling up their stakes in all group companies over the past couple of years. He said the real long term investors found the prevailing prices of scrips very attractive.