India's Sensex slips 200 points; CEO Sikka quits Infosys

Indian shares snapped three-day gains on Friday, dragged lower by index heavyweight Infosys after Vishal Sikka resigned as its chief executive officer.

infosys
An employee is seen behind an Infosys logo at the company's campus in Bangalore. Reuters

Indian shares snapped three-day gains on Friday, dragged lower by index heavyweight Infosys after Vishal Sikka resigned as its chief executive officer.

At 0610 GMT, the S&P BSE Sensex lost 0.76 percent at 31,553 while the broader NSE Nifty dropped 0.63 at 9,842.

Infosys, the country's second-largest Indian IT services firm, fell as much as 7.6 percent to a more than one-month low of Rs 943.

In a surprise announcement, Sikka resigned as CEO citing a stream of distractions and disruptions in recent months.

Sikka has been appointed as executive vice chairman in a newly created position, Infosys said in a statement on Friday morning.

Among the other top index losers: Sun Pharma declined 3 percent, Lupin fell 1.8 percent, Adani Ports lost 1.5 percent while HDFC was down 1.4 percent.

S&P BSE Information Technology index dropped 2.4 percent, among the top sectoral losers.

Market breadth was in the favour of losers, with about 2 stocks declining to every 1 stock that advanced.

In Asia, most of the indexes fell, tracking losses in Wall Street overnight as worries grew over U.S. President Donald Trump's ability to push through his economic agenda.

Meanwhile, heightened terror fears after at least 13 people died when a van plowed into pedestrians in Barcelona further tempered risk appetite.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dropped 0.5 percent.

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