Indian mortgage lender Dewan Housing Finance Corp Ltd plans to raise $100 million for a private equity fund by June-end, a top official said on Monday. The money is part of the $250 million the company plans to raise for the private equity fund by March 2009, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Kapil Wadhawan said. Initial investors for the fund would be from the Middle East and the UK and more than half the corpus would be allocated towards real estate projects in Tier-II and Tier-III cities, he said. It had earlier raised 1 billion rupees for another private equity fund and the entire corpus has been invested in various real estate projects, Wadhawan said.   more »

Even as numbers of private equity deals fell in the later half of April 2008, real estate seemed to suck in whatever was available. Around 78 per cent of the private equity money went into real estate in the period. For the four months January-April 2008, 33 per cent of private equity money has gone into real estate according to a report by global audit and consulting firm Grant Thornton. Real estate is tailed by power at 17 per cent. Another global firm Dealogic has identified India as the second biggest private equity destination for 2008 in Asia, with Japan in the lead. The total number of deals in the second half of April was only eight compared to 24 deals in the first fortnight. The slowing down comes after a active period that saw 156 deals being struck in the first four months of 2008, the Grant Thornton report said.   more »

Global private equity companies are no longer interested in investing in pure pharmaceutical research and development companies with less attractive pipelines and in early-stage drug development, said Steve Arlington, global pharmaceuticals advisory services leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). "Private equity players look at returns in the short run and drug discovery research is a high-risk business involving big investment for a longer period of 10-15 years. They prefer to invest in contract research companies or clinical trial companies or those having promising drug pipelines and products in late-stage clinical trials," he said. In a recent trend, India's leading drug companies have hived off their R&D assets to separate companies to insulate the investors of parent companies from risks associated with long-term drug research, and to attract private equity funding for drug research. The hived-off facilities are yet to announce any private equity participation or strategic investment.   more »