Just a week after the State Bank of India (SBI) announced a $2 billion (Rs8,100 crore) infrastructure fund with Australia’s Macquarie Group, the nation’s largest lender is set to tie up with an affiliate of Unitech Ltd, the country’s second biggest publicly traded real estate company, to float a private equity (PE) real estate fund. A senior SBI executive said the state-run bank has signed a preliminary agreement with New Delhi-based Unitech Realty Investors Ltd for the proposed fund, but the bank is yet to get the board approval. The executive didn’t want to disclose the size of the fund. SBI’s anchor investment in the real estate fund is yet to be decided. “We want to be in areas where we are not,” said Deepak Chawla, a deputy managing director at SBI, in charge of corporate strategy and new business. Unitech Realty Investors manages Rs3,000 crore of money under three domestic funds and one foreign fund. The company invests only in Unitech’s developments. Mint couldn’t ascertain whether the SBI-Unitech fund will invest only in Unitech’s developments or in those of other companies too. Prior to the infrastructure fund with Macquarie Group, SBI had bought a 20% stake in February in Mumbai-based Sage Capital Fund Management, which is tapping investors for a $250 million special situations fund.   more »