Equity benchmarks remained lacklustre. The Sensex was down 35.19 points at 28942.83 and the Nifty down 20 points at 8923.

ICICI Bank surged nearly 3.7 percent after its life insurance subsidiary ICICI Prudential Life has received approval from the SEBI for its initial public offering. JP Morgan added the stock to its model portfolio.

State Bank of India also gained 3.7 percent and Bank of Baroda rallied 4 percent.

BHEL spiked over 14 percent after better-than-expected quarterly earnings. Profit grew by 54.2 percent to Rs 77.7 crore on yearly basis.

JLR August sales lift Tata Motors to 19-month high, Citi ups target

MIC Electronics shares were locked at 20 percent upper circuit at Rs 17.28 after getting much awaited patent for its LED Digi-poster. The patent is valid up to the year 2028.

LED Digi-poster is the key for next generation digital display technology for various applications across the world. It is an intelligent, integrated LED based, robust and rugged display device meant for use in advertisements or information dissemination, either indoors or outdoors.

Additionally, “MIC was one of only three companies awarded a contract to supply a new LED based coach light fixture to the Indian Railways,” the Hyderabad-based LED video display manufacturer said in its filing.

NITI Aayog has made a case for strategic sale in as many as 44 public sector undertakings where the government can reduce its holding below 50 percent by selling its stake.

NITI Aayog’s recommendation of strategic sale of these PSUs is part of the task entrusted to it by the government to suggest ways to divest Centre’s stake in profit-making as well as loss making and sick units.

“NITI Aayog has already recommended about 44 companies for strategic sale and that is going through a process. Dipam (Department of Investment and Public Asset Management) is working on that, taking it forward. “But for us, it’s an ongoing process, so we are looking at the second lot, the third lot and we will come out with recommendations,” NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant told reporters.

Varun Beverages, franchisee for soft drinks maker PepsiCo, has received markets regulator Sebi’s approval to raise over Rs 1,000 crore through an initial public offering. Besides, leading logistics service and solutions provider, Seaways Shipping & Logistics has also got Sebi’s nod to float an IPO.

Varun Beverages and Seaways Shipping & Logistics had filed their draft red herring prospectuses with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in June and March, respectively.

The two firms got the regulator approval on August 31, as per the latest update. The initial public offer (IPO) of Varun Beverages entails sale of up to 2.5 crore shares, including fresh issue of 1.5 crore shares and offloading of stake by the promoters.

Shares of Redington (India) jumped 6 percent intraday on Wednesday as Apple is gearing up to launch iPhone 7 today. Redington India is one of the distributors for Apple in India, handling  the vendor’s entire range of products comprising iPad, Mac, iPhone and iWatch. The company is also a distributor for iPhone in UAE and Nigeria.

Meanwhile, at its annual product launch in San Francisco on Wednesday, the world’s most valuable publicly traded company is expected by blogs and analysts to reveal an iPhone without a headphone jack, paving the way for wireless headphones, a touch-sensitive home button that vibrates, double-lens cameras for the larger ‘Plus’ edition and other incremental improvements.