The world's largest luxury conglomerate, LVMH, through its private equity arm L Capital, is set to acquire a significant minority stake in Gitanjali Gems' proposed subsidiary that will control its branded jewellery and retail businesses, said two persons directly involved in the transaction. The deal worth $100-125 million is aimed at bringing the world's best know-how, expand aggressively in the domestic market and take Gitanjali Gems to global scale. With India and China accounting for 60 percent of the wealth of the region, the French multinational would be happy to get a larger footprint here. L Capital will pick up stake using money from its $500-million L Capital Asia Fund, which was raised in 2010. L Capital India's senior official, Anuradha Raja, declined comment on the transaction. NM Rothschild and Keynote Corporate Services are the advisors to Gitanjali Gems, and officials from both the investment banking firms refused comment. […]

Mukta Arts Limited has completed its presence in all verticals of the Motion Picture Production pipeline by acquiring a substantial minority stake in Maya Digital Studios. When Mukta Arts went public in 2000, the only film production house at the time to go public, it laid out strategies for the next decade. Since 2000, Mukta Arts has built business models in Exhibition Programming, Distribution, Film Education and Film Exhibition. After taking this stake, the Mukta Arts group is now present in all verticals of the film industry starting from Film education (Whistling Woods International), Programming & Distribution (Mukta Movie Distributors), Exhibition (‘Mukta Cinemas’ chain of multiplexes open in April 2011) and now in the Animation & VFX industry in Maya Digital Studios. The new studio will be based out of the Mukta Arts Head Office Building ‘Mukta House’, in Filmcity Mumbai & will have 4 primary business lines – Original IP creation, outsourced Animation & VFX work for international projects, international co-productions & 2D to 3D conversion. […]