The Indian arm of Anglo-Swedish drug maker AstraZeneca has decided to slash its promoter shareholding to 75 per cent to comply with market regulator SEBI's requirement for minimum public shareholding by the month of June this year.

AstraZeneca Pharma India informed the stock exchanges that AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals AB Sweden had decided to slash its shareholding in the company in order to comply with regulatory requirement.

As of December 31, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals AB Sweden owned 89.99 per cent stake in AstraZeneca Pharma India, while FIIs and MFs owned 0.27 per cent and 0.58 per cent stakes, respectively.

The decision marks a departure from AstraZeneca's earlier attempts to delist its shares from the exchanges to take the company private in India.

A BSE filing by the local devision states, "The company on March 5, 2013 has received, by e-mail communication, a scanned copy of the letter dated February 28, 2013 from the promoter AZPS notifying the company of its decision."

It means the promoters took five days to inform the exchanges about their decision, which raised governance questions.

Shriram Subramanian, founder and managing director of InGovern Research Services, said that the gap between date of the decision and its conveyance to the stock exchanges appeared odd, and merit an investigation by SEBI.

Stock in AstraZeneca Pharma India lipped 14.6 per cent to a 52-week low of Rs 711 a share on Wednesday during the intraday trade, before closing at Rs 773.10 a share, down 7.2 per cent from the previous day's close.