Hinduja Group is planning to buy a controlling stake in French auto component manufacturer Valeo in a deal expected to to be valued around 1.5 billion dollars, a newspaper report said Monday. The Indian business conglomerate met top executives of Valeo in Paris recently and talks were on, the Business Standard newspaper reported citing unnamed sources. A Hinduja Group spokesman based in Mumbai said the report was speculative and refused to comment. […]

ICICI Venture seems to have got a toehold in Karvy Stock Broking, which, sources said, is most likely to have parted with a chunk of its equity in favour of the domestic private equity (PE) fund. While neither the value of the deal nor the size of the stake could be officially ascertained, it is learnt that Hong Kong’s Century Pacific Group, which had invested in Karvy in mid-2005, wanted out. Century Pacific had picked up a 20% stake in Karvy Stock Broking for Rs 83 crore, which had valued Karvy at Rs 415 crore then. Sources indicated that Karvy now values itself at around Rs 1,000 crore, which is probably one of the reasons why others opted out of the race. […]

Going by the stock movement of Cairn India it is difficult to ignore the reports doing rounds in British media that BP is planning to takeover Cairn India's parent company Cairn Energy Plc. Reports indicate that BP may make 2,800 pence per share bid for the UK based oil company. In the past, BP management has indicated that getting a foothold into India is its biggest challenge. If one is to believe most analyst reports in UK, Cairn is by far the most obvious merger and acquisition candidate in the European E&P sector given that Cairn has a world scale undeveloped resource base in Rajasthan. […]

CNBC-TV18 learns that UK-based Capita likely to buy Prudential's Indian BPO. The deal size is about USD 80-100 million. Prudential's Indian BPO staff strength is 1,800. This news is entirely source-based and we do not have an official conformation from either of the two parties. Prudential said that they do not comment on market rumors or speculation and Capita did not offer any comments at all. Sources added that the deal value could be anywhere between USD 80-100 million and Prudential’s Indian BPO employees are about 1,800 people. Prudential has about 20 million customers worldwide and manages assets of about 250 billion pounds globally. So, that is the kind of business that the center does in India. Capita did have a JV with Mastek. It does currently have and owns about 90% of the JV. They have 42 centers globally and two centers again in India. (Money Control) […]

US-based Internet giants such as Google and Yahoo are eyeing Rediff.com India Ltd, which runs one of India's most popular consumer Internet portals, for a possible acquisition. Investment banking sources told Hindustan Times that the management of Nasdaq-listed Rediff was in talks with the global companies for a negotiated takeover deal. Rediff, Google and Yahoo officials could not be immediately reached for their comments. Talk of the deal is emerging in the context of a general worldwide rebound in the Internet business, and India emerging as a hot story in the global economy with strong growth in both telephone penetration and the Internet in urban areas. Leading US-based investment journal Barrons reported this month that Rediff is seeing speculation that it could be a takeover target. Rediff’s stock has witnessed a sharp jump in share price and volume on Nasdaq over the past week, when it also launched a Website to help consumers upload voice, video and photographic content for free. […]