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Private equity firms Texas Pacific Group and Apax Partners are close to buying some of the founders' stake in India's Patni Computer Systems Ltd , the Business Standard newspaper reported on Monday, citing unnamed sources. Gajendra and Ashok Patni, two of the three brothers who founded the software services firm, are looking to sell their stake, local media had earlier reported. Their holding in the company total about 29 percent. The agreement between one of the private equity partners and […] ICICI Venture and Indivision, the private equity arm of Future Capital Holdings, have together picked up 16.46% in security solutions firm Tops Security for Rs 140 crore. Tops group CMD Diwan Rahul Nanda said on Thursday in Mumbai that ICICI Venture picked up 13.6% stake for Rs 115 crore, while Indivsion, which earlier held 4.94% in the company, invested Rs 25 crore to take its total stake to 7.08%. After the stake sale, the stake of Nanda family is expected to come down from 79.18% to 65.98%. Besides Nanda family, investor Rakesh Jhunjunwala owns a 12.7% stake in the company. In a move to enhance its international presence, the company is close to acquiring a UK-based firm for around Rs 120 crore. The company is also looking to spread its operations Australia, the US and the Middle East in the next five years. The company may enter the market in a year, said Mr Nanda. […] Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd has picked up around 16% stake in Liberty Whiteware – a new venture by the Liberty Group for manufacturing and marketing of bathroom products and accessories made of ceramic. “Our association with BCCL has come at a right time. BCCL, being the largest media company in the country, would help us experimenting new media channels and repeating our success story to make Liberty Whiteware a household name,” says Adarsh Gupta, CEO, Liberty Whiteware. The products are manufactured at the company's state-of-the-art facility set up at Neemrana, Rajasthan at an investment of Rs 100 crore. With the machinery and the know-how imported from SACMI of Italy, the plant will have an initial capacity of 3,00,000 units, which will be gradually doubled to 6,00,000 units by 2009. […] Vadodara Stock Exchange has elicited a good response for dilution of its 51% stake, as per the direction of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). According to sources at VSE, a meeting of the board would be held here, in the near future, to discuss the outline of the proposals. Sebi had directed the local stock exchanges to dilute their stakes up to 51%. According to the notification, VSE has started searching for a strategic partner and has invited bids from financial institutes and high net worth professionals, through expression of interest (EOI). The last date of submitting the bids had been extended to August 13. Sources at VSE said that the procedure of submitting bids has been completed and received bids from around 30 bidders. […] Lehman Brothers will buy the institutional equity group of Brics Securities, a leading brokerage firm in India. Brics offers financial services including equity, debt and commodity brokerage, portfolio management, distribution of third-party products and depository facilities. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Indian media has speculated that the US investment bank will pay Rs2 billion ($49.5 million) for Brics. Via the deal, Lehman Brothers will gain a ready-made equity research, sales and trading platform in India with 40 professionals. This will enable it to offer clients comprehensive equity research, primary equity placement, secondary trading and investment services in India. Brics currently has active coverage of 70 companies.Brics' institutional equity group services foreign and domestic financial institutions, mutual funds, and banks. Pankaj Vaish, Lehman’s head of equities in India, will take charge of the business. Brics Securities was created in October 2003 following the dissolution of Birla Sun Life Securities, a joint venture between the Aditya Birla Group and the Sunlife Group of Canada. In a written statement, Tarun Jotwani, chairman and chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers India, says: “This transaction underscores our commitment to building a strong franchise. Brics' institutional equity group is a natural fit in our efforts to accelerate our development and broaden our suite of client services.” […] Tata Capital and Tata Investments would jointly pick up a 4.5 per cent stake in Development Credit Bank (DCB) for around Rs 85 crore, a bank official said. The bank would make a preferential allotment of shares to five specific group of investors, including the Tatas, for Rs 300 crore, DCB Managing Director and CEO Gautam Vir said. Other investors who would be allotted shares are Al Bateen of Abu Dhabi (4.5 per cent), Lehman Brothers arm, Marc Faber and SVG. Vir said the issue is being made to increase the capital base of the bank and is awaiting approval of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for the allotment. Following the issue, the bank’s capital adequacy ratio (CAR) would increase from 10.5 per cent to 17.7 per cent. […] The IFCI board has put been in place a more transparent procedure for inducting a strategic investor amid concerns over the manner in which the country’s oldest financial institution had set about doing the job. The bidding process has been rejigged to address the issues raised at the board meeting held on August 4 by some of the directors who felt that the sale procedure was opaque and non-transparent. These directors wanted to ensure that there was no repeat of a scenario similar to the Sasan power project, according to a source who is privy to the developments. The project’s consultants Ernst & Young had failed to identify problems in the bid document of Lanco-Globeleq till the project was awarded to the consortium. Ernst & Young is the consultant for IFCI as well. “Responding to this, the board had decided to have a foolproof and a transparent sale procedure and consider only serious buyers who will enable IFCI emerge as a stronger institution,” said senior level Delhi based officials. At the the last board meeting, the directors had appointed N Balasubramanian, former chairman of Sidbi, as chairman of IFCI, replacing PS Shenoy. […] HDFC Realty, Citigroup and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC), among others, are set to pump $300 million into Shapoorji Pallonji Group’s realty business. Sources said the deal—amongst the biggest private-equity plays in the Indian real estate sector—was imminent and might also involve a few more investors. It is believed that PEs could pick 15-20% stake in the recently-created holding entity of the group’s realty venture. When contacted, Shapoorji Pallonji & Company director Jimmy Parakh said: “We are in talks with PE investors. But we have not concluded any deal. We are raising $300 million.” […] Seven broking firms have been happy recipients of around $270 million in investments by private equity firms during the first six months of 2007, signalling a new trend in the industry. This compared to just three deals of $202 million which the broking space saw in the whole of 2006. According to Venture Intelligence, a Chennai-based research service focused on private equity and venture capital activity, the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector overtook manufacturing, healthcare and lifesciences to emerge as the second most attractive private equity investment asset class. The first quarter of FY08 logged 15 deals worth around $1.3 billion in the sector. In the 18 months ended June 2007, BFSI segment attracted about $3.3 billion across 58 investments. While banks, retail broking houses, NBFCs were among the favourites within the sector, stock exchanges (both BSE and NSE) as well as housing finance major HDFC raised large amounts of capital. Within the BFSI sector, broking houses were the most sought-after investment class. The reason for this could be the fact that PE funds think India is under-penetrated as far as equity is concerned and there is still a good leeway left for the upside, said Venture Intelligence managing director Arun Natarajan. […] Fidelity Investments International has picked up a 7% stake in Transport Corporation of India (TCI), the Delhi-based express logistics company, for Rs 53 crore. TCI will issue equity shares of Rs 2 face value to Fidelity Investments at Rs 105.25 per share, in accordance with Sebi guidelines for preferential issue.Post-issue, Fidelity’s stake in TCI would increase to nearly 10% of the paid up equity. TCI’s executive director Vineet Agarwal said: “The amount raised will be utilised to fund the expansion of TCI, specifically for building capacity in the warehousing space and setting up information technology (IT) systems.” Earlier, in 2006, TCI had announced expansion plans requiring Rs 450 crore of investments in warehousing, fleet upgradation and expansion, shipping and IT systems. TCI intends to raise another Rs 60-70 crore through sale of equity in the following year. “Our plan was to raise almost Rs 120 crore in two stages through equity dilution. The first stage has been completed. We will raise another Rs 70 crore within six to nine months,” said Mr Agarwal. The company claims it has already invested Rs 100 crore for expansion in FY07 and would be looking at investing another Rs 200 crore in the current fiscal. […] |