Jet Airways India ’s chairman Naresh Goyal is planning to dilute 10 per cent stake of the company in favour of foreign institutional investors and private equity players, K G Vishwanath, general manager-finance, said. “The decision was taken about three weeks ago,” Vishwanath said, but declined to disclose the price at which the stake will be sold. The stake sale will be conducted prior to the rights issue of equity shares through which the company plans to raise about $400 million. […]

Domestic brokerage firm Religare Enterprises is close to acquiring London’s oldest broking firm; Hichens, Harrison & Co. The deal is expected to be announced by this weekend. The size of the acquisition is pegged over $100 million (about Rs 400 crore). For the half-year ended June 2007, Hichens, Harrison & Co — listed on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange —had reported revenues of £10.6 million and operating profits of £2.9 million. If successful, this would be first overseas acquisition by an Indian brokerage firm abroad. When ET contacted, Religare CEO and MD Sunil Godhwani said, “We are constantly evaluating opportunities to strengthen our business model both through organic and inorganic routes, especially for our institutional business.” The proposed acquisition is expected to give Religare a foothold in the extremely competitive international capital markets. The company, which currently has one of the largest retail networks among Indian brokerage firms, is now eyeing a strong presence in the institutional space. […]

Tata Motors will buy luxury brands Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor for $2.3 bn in cash. The purchase price is less than half of what Ford had paid for the two brands as demand for luxury vehicles has dropped the world over. The acquisition is the largest ever by an Indian company in the automobile space. Ford will pay about $600 mn to the Jaguar Land Rover pension funds, the two companies said in a joint statement today. Ford had bought Jaguar in 1989 for $2.5 bn while Land Rover was bought from BMW for $2.5 bn in 2000. The transfer of ownership to Tata Motors is expected to close by the end of the next quarter, subject to regulatory approvals. “We have enormous respect for the two brands and will endeavour to preserve and build on their heritage and competitiveness, keeping their identities intact,” Tata Motors Chairman Ratan Tata said. Alongwith the two brands the deal will involve acquisition of plants and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) held by the two brands. Tata Motors did not mention the mode of financing the deal, but sources familiar with the developments said it would be done mainly through bridge financing from a clutch of banks, including JP Morgan, Citigroup and State Bank of India (SBI). The company is raising Rs 4,000 crore through issue of securities in the foreign and domestic market in one or more tranches […]

AOL is close to selling its call center in India to Aegis, a BPO (business process outsourcing) company of India's Essar Group, according to informed sources. Aegis was one of several companies that bid to acquire the 1,000-staff call center in Bangalore. A formal announcement is expected next week. An AOL spokesman did not confirm the proposed sale of the call center. Essar dismissed the report as speculative. The Times of India reported Thursday that an announcement of the deal was likely Friday. By an agreement between AOL and Aegis, AOL will continue to give its call center business to Aegis for the next couple of years, the newspaper said. […]

India's leading winemaker Champagne Indage is set to buy Australian Vintage's Loxton winery for 60 million Australian dollars ($54.6 million). Australian Vintage Ltd. (AVL) has signed a deal to sell its second-largest winery to Indage within six months, subject to Indage satisfying due diligence requirements. The 90,000-litre facility in the state of south Australia's Riverland is the country's fifth-largest winery. “We're pleased we're able to find a buyer and sell at a price we're comfortable with,” AVL's chief executive Dane Hudson told the Sydney Morning Herald. For Indage, which is easily the biggest wine grower in India with about 75 percent market share, the purchase of Loxton is part of a larger strategy of “going global”. Last July the company, aiming to get four percent of the global wine market by 2010, bought a listed Australian winery, Tandou Wines (renamed Thachi Wines), in the Riverland district of south Australia. Indage's Managing Director R.S. Chougule said in the company's annual report that the Thachi purchase was the “first small step towards a giant stride ahead” in a five-year plan to have production facilities in 10 countries including Australia, Argentina, France, Italy and South Africa. […]