Dubai-based $6-billion conglomerate Emirates Trading Agency (ETA) will be divesting up to 25% stake in its Indian engineering services firm ETA Engineering to New Silk Route (NSR). The Rajat Gupta-spearheaded private equity may invest Rs 300 crore in ETA Engineering, said sources privy to the development. ETA Engineering, based in Chennai, provides electromechanical services to hotels, hospitals, technology parks and other commercial buildings. A top official at ETA group said the company was in talks with the PE funds to raise capital for unlocking the huge growth potential in India. The investor will subscribe mostly to fresh shares apart from buying a small part of the promoting holding in a secondary transaction, he added. Veda Corporate Finance is adviser to the transaction, sources added. NSR is $1.4-billion private equity fund focused on Asian markets, especially India. The recovery in private equity investments has been led by the buoyancy in the core infrastructure and allied services, and this potential transaction reflects the continued investor interest in solution providers to the infra play. […]

Multiples Alternate Asset Management, a private equity (PE) fund founded by Renuka Ramnath, the former CEO of ICICI Venture, has received Rs 325 crore ($70 million) for its offshore fund from the Public Institution for Social Security (PIFSS) — a pension fund run by the Government of Kuwait. With this fund, Multiples has achieved a corpus of more than $425 million. It is targeting a size of $450 million. In March, the government-run Canada Pension Plan Investment Board made an anchor investment of $100 million into the fund. In July, CDC Group, a UK-based development finance institution, committed $30 million. Its first sector-agnostic fund will focus on sectors like financial services, healthcare, infrastructure and retail, with a typical deal size of $20-30 million. Though the size of PIFSS is not known, it is one of the largest pension funds in West Asia. […]