As the Reserve Bank of India-mandated three-year lock-in period for individual investors and exchange-traded funds in Yes Bank gets over on Monday, the private lender may face selling pressure during the course of the week.

Nine banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI) picked up almost 49% of Yes Bank stocks as a bailout exercise in March 2020 for Rs 10 per share —at a premium of Rs 8 on the face value.

Together, as much as 1.35 billion shares are with individual investors — including retail, HNIs and NRIs — under the lock-in and another 67million with exchange-traded funds. 

The fate of these shares will be known over the next few weeks. If they decide to exit, the selling pressure on Yes Bank will intensify.

As of December 2022, SBI held 26.14% or 6,050 million shares of Yes Bank; HDFC & HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank held 1,000 million shares each; Axis Bank 600 million; Kotak Mahindra Bank 500 million; Federal Bank and Bandhan Bank 300 million each and IDFC First Bank held 250 million shares before it went belly-up on March 5, 2020. These eight banks held originally almost 11 billion shares in the bank.

SBI AMC also holds 23.67 million of Yes Bank shares in its Nifty 50 ETF, PTI reports. While Kotak AMC has 11.99 million shares, Nippon India holds 10.56million. SBI ETF of BankNifty has another 6.72 million and UTI AMC holds 5.89 million.

A majority of these banks have, however, already sold almost 25% of their holding in the bank, which was not under the lock-in.