Asian stock markets are higher today as Japanese and Hong Kong shares show gains. The Nikkei 225 is up 0.03% while the Hang Seng is up 0.16%. The Shanghai Composite is trading up by 0.02%. On Wall Street, all the three major indices once again climbed to new record closing highs as market participants looked ahead to key corporate earnings reports.

Back home, share markets in India have opened the day on a flattish note with a negative bias. The BSE Sensex is trading lower by 10 points while the NSE Nifty is trading lower by 3 points. The BSE Mid Cap and BSE Small Cap index opened the day up by 0.2% & 0.3% respectively.

Sectoral indices have opened the day on a mixed note with stocks from banking sector and consumer durables sector leading the pack of gainers. While, realty stocks and metal stocks are witnessing selling pressure. The rupee is trading at 64.76 to the US$.

Bank stocks have opened the day in green with Federal Bank and Karur Vysya Bank being the most active stocks in this space. As per an article in Livemint, Punjab National Bank (PNB) plans to raise equity capital through a qualified institutional placement (QIP) that could see the lender raise as much as US$250-300 million.

Notably, PNB is among the several state-owned banks that have planned to tap the capital markets to raise funds in order to recapitalize balance sheets laden with bad loans.

Apart from the QIP, the state-owned lender has planned to raise funds from various other avenues too.

The lender is looking to sell as much as 10% in its housing finance unit and list its life insurance subsidiary, the reports noted.

Last week, Dena Bank raised around Rs 4 billion through its QIP offering. Allahabad Bank has already obtained shareholders’ approval to raise equity capital aggregating up to Rs 20 billion, the reports noted.