In a major open market transaction on Tuesday, U.S.-based private equity firm Carlyle Group, through its affiliate CA Basque Investments, sold a 2.6% stake in Yes Bank worth ₹1,775 crore. The transaction involved the offloading of 82 crore shares at a price range of ₹21.61 to ₹21.68 apiece on the NSE and BSE.

This stake reduction has brought Carlyle's holding in the Mumbai-based private sector bank down from 6.84% to 4.22%.

Despite this high-value transaction, Yes Bank’s shares took a hit — falling 10.40% to ₹20.85 on the BSE and 10.01% to ₹20.95 on the NSE.

The sale comes shortly after State Bank of India (SBI) and seven other banks announced their intent to divest a 20% stake in Yes Bank to Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) for ₹13,483 crore — the largest cross-border deal in Indian banking to date.

Of this, SBI will offload 13.19% of its holdings for ₹8,889 crore, reducing its stake from 24% to just over 10%. The remaining 6.81% will be divested by Axis Bank, Bandhan Bank, Federal Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, IDFC First Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank, amounting to ₹4,594 crore.

SMBC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) — Japan’s second-largest banking group with $2 trillion in assets — will emerge as the single-largest shareholder of Yes Bank post-transaction.

Meanwhile, Yes Bank continues to show robust financials. For Q4 FY25, the bank reported a 63% jump in standalone net profit at ₹738 crore, compared to ₹451.9 crore in Q4 FY24. Annual net profit for FY25 more than doubled to ₹2,406 crore from ₹1,251 crore a year earlier.