KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 11): Shares of utility giant Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) slid about 9.62% in just two days amid the continued heavy selling pressure on the local market following a slew of announcements by the government earlier this week.

At 9.45am, TNB fell about 5.31% or 78 sen to RM13.90, with 2.19 million shares exchanging hands, bringing its market capitalisation to RM78.93 billion.

The continued heavy selldown in TNB from RM15.38 on Tuesday saw about RM8.4 billion worth of market capitalisation wiped out as at the time of writing.

Inter Pacific Securities research head Pong Teng Siew told theedgemarkets.com that one of the reasons for the declining share price was because many of the institutional funds, foreign funds in particular, were reducing their weightage in Malaysia.

"They seem to be selling quite consistently over the last few days. It seems to me that they have moved to Thailand, and Thailand was a big gainer yesterday. When they sell in Malaysia, very frequently they move to Thailand," said Pong, adding the higher energy cost, which is denominated in US dollar, is also one of the reasons for the selldown.