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ICICI Venture rejigs top deck, gets $200 m for its third fund

India’s largest private equity player ICICI Venture is rejigging its core management team. The PE firm is hiring Prashant Purker, former managing director (global finance) of Lehman India, as president. Mr Purker was responsible for Lehman’s operations in debt, equity and client-based risk solutions group in India. He has over 20 years of industry experience, having previously worked with ICICI Bank. Three senior members of the core team — Sumit Chandwani, Jayanta Banerjee, KS Jangbahadur — are being redesignated as presidents and will look after specific verticals like technology, healthcare, infrastructure and MBOs. Besides Mr Purkar, ICICI Venture is set to hire another senior member of the PE industry as president. The new team is being handpicked by Vishakha Mulye, MD & CEO of ICICI Venture, who stepped in earlier this year. Ms Mulye was travelling and could not be contacted for her comment. […]

Sequoia Capital invests $8.2 mln in Just Dial

Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital India has invested 400 million rupees ($8.2 million) in telephone and web search services provider, Just Dial, the firms said in a joint statement on Thursday. Sequoia Capital India's managing director Sandeep Singhal will join the board of Just Dial, which has over 90 percent of the market share and reaches out to about 400 million mobile customers and 40 million internet users, they added. The number of calls Just Dial receives has more than tripled to 200,000 per day in three years, the statement said adding over 100,000 small and medium enterprises advertise on Just Dial. […]

UTI Asset Management set up $500 mln pvt equity fund

UTI Asset Management Company has set up a private equity fund worth $500 million in partnership with Germany's HSH Nordbank and Kuwait's Noor Financial Investment Company, the firm said on Thursday. The fund will mainly tap offshore clients and invest in unlisted infrastructure firms engaged in sectors such as roads, ports, power, logistics, airports and energy among others, the money manager said in a statement. (Reuters) […]

Falcon Tyres eyeing to divest stake to PE firms for Rs. 100 crore

Falcon Tyres, part of the Ruia Group, is drawing up plans to offload its promoter’s stake by a few percentage to a private equity firm for Rs. 100 crore according to latest media reports. The amount raised will then be deployed to scale up its output at Mysore to 14 lakh units per annum by 2010-11. The manufacturer of Dunlop Tyres is currently in the process of preparing our presentation and aims to raise the money in a couple of months. In addition to that, the company will also introduce tubeless tyres in its portfolio shortly, in a bid to increase profitability. It is to be mentioned that Falcon currently manufactures two- and three-wheeler tyres under the Dunlop brand name. […]

Rel Infra acquires RNRL's 51% stake in Reliance Cementation

Reliance Infrastructure (Rel Infra) has acquired a 51 percent stake in Reliance Cementation from another group firm Reliance Natural Resources (RNRL). Consequently, Reliance Cementation, the newly-created company of the diversified Anil Ambani Group for its foray into the cement business, has become a subsidiary of the Reliance Infrastructure that runs power generation, distribution and transmission businesses. Addressing the shareholders at Rel Infra's annual general meeting, group chairman Anil Ambani said: “We have plans to set up cement capacity of 20 million tonne per annum with an investment of nearly Rs 10,000 crore over the next five years. This will make us the top five cement player in the country,” Mr Ambani told the shareholders. […]

Louis Dreyfus buys 49% in ABG Infralogistics arm

French shipping firm Louis Dreyfus Armateurs SA (LDA) has bought a 49% stake in the bulk port handling business of port logistics firm ABG Infralogistics Ltd, a top company official said. “The deal is done,” said Saket Agarwal, managing director of ABG Infralogistics. An official announcement will be made on Friday, he said over the phone from Mumbai. Louis Dreyfus will pay Rs90 crore to ABG Infralogistics for the stake purchase, Agarwal said. The deal was cleared by India’s Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) a few months earlier. FIPB vets all foreign investments coming into India. The deal comes even as the world battles a crash in commodity demand and prices, triggered mainly by the global economic slowdown. Ahead of the sale, ABG Infralogistics had hived off its bulk cargo handling assets operating at Union government-owned New Mangalore, Paradip and Vizag ports into a separate subsidiary ABG Bulk Handling Pvt. Ltd. […]