India will present its Union Budget today. Although Budget is a statement of annual accounts, it’s considered an important document for its wider policy implications. Finance Minister P Chidambaram has a tough task today. The country is going through a price rise, and he will have to balance the rising inflation and growth. If he [...]

Soon after Norway’s Orkla Foods acquired MTR Foods, here is another international food biggie entering India. US’ largest chocolate and confectionery-maker Hershey is acquiring a 51 per cent stake in the food and beverage business of the Godrej group, reports The Economic Times. A 51 per cent equity stake in Godrej Beverages & Food will [...]

That is a good exit for shrewd entrepreneur Kalpathi Suresh. He has sold a 51 per cent stake in his IT training company Software Solution Integrated (SSI) to PVP Group for Rs 613.14 crore ($140 million). The promoters (the Kalpathis and associates) hold 71 per cent in the company, which was started 15 years ago [...]

HOV Services, a Pune based BPO that services the financial and accounting sector, has made the largest acquisition of a BPO outside India. HOV has acquired US-based BPO Lason for $148 million (about Rs 660 crore), which will be funded by private equity funds and by debt.
The company has already raised $63 million (around Rs [...]

(Editor’s note: Press notes 1 and 18 once again came to the fore recently, thanks to Danone and Britannia spat on the Avesthagen investment. They are regulations that govern joint ventures between an Indian and foreign company. Our columnist Shantanu Surpure, partner at Economic Laws Practice, a Mumbai-based law firm, explores the topic and contends [...]

RPG-group owned Zensar Technologies has acquired the US-based ThoughtDigital, a firm focused on Oracle applications, for $24.9 million. The acquisition will be funded through a mix of debt and internal accruals, with 60 per cent coming from borrowings. The all-cash deal is structured with earn-outs to be paid over two years.
ThoughtDigital had revenues of $27 [...]

Alagappan Murugappan has left private equity fund Deeva Partners which he helped found a year ago to join back at ICICI Securities. Murugapan is joining as head of the equities business at ICICI Securities, the investment banking subsidiary of ICICI Bank, reports FinanceAsia.com. The move back to investment banking is strange since a private equity [...]

Cellebrum, a B K Modi Group company in the mobile value added service space, plans to acquire a mobile content company. Cellebrum will soon appoint an investment bank to scout for deals. Cellebrum’s chief operating officer Saket Agarwal tells The Economic Times that “the proposed acquisition target will be a company with expertise in developing [...]

Local I-Bankers Out, Wall Street Types In
Apollo Hospitals May Bid For UK’s Abbey Hospitals
Hexaware Looks For Buys In US & Europe
HTIL Refutes Ruias Claim Of Right Of First Refusal
Fujitsu May Sell Its 29% Stake In Zensar To RPG For $38 Million
Spice Communications Files IPO Prospectus
Srei Venture Capital Plans To Raise $250 Million Infrastructure Fund

If Nimesh Kampani, chairman of JM Financial, is to be believed, then he didn’t want to split with Morgan Stanley. Kampani is believed to have said that the decision to separate was Morgan Stanley’s. Apparently the US investment bank had been talking of a split for two or three years.
“Working in a joint venture is [...]

Last of the Indian-MNC joint ventures in the Indian financial services space has been dissolved with the split of JM Financial and Morgan Stanley. JM has bagged a net sum of $425 million from the deal. JM has sold its 49 per cent stake in the broking arm for $445 million and bought out the [...]

Just heard on CNBC TV18 channel. JM Morgan Stanley is going the Kotak Mahindra-Goldman Sachs and DSP-Merrill Lynch way. JM Financial and Morgan Stanley are splitting. JM will sell its institutional brokerage business to Morgan Stanley for $445 million. JM will build its own broking business. On the other hand, JM will retain the investment [...]

US Asks India To Help Oracle Up i-flex Stake
Govt Panel Clears Merger of Air-India And Indian
LN Mittal’s Brothers In Race To Acquire Mittal’s US Plant
Infosys Plans To Acquire UK’s SmartStream For

Venture capital fund GVFL Ltd has made a seed investment of Rs 8 million ($180,000) in RapidRadio Solutions Pvt. Ltd, a technology start-up spun off from the NirmaLabs incubator program. RapidRadio, set up in 2005, works in the area of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology.
Rapid Radio is the sixth investment from the Rs 270 million [...]

Here is an interesting development, if it’s true. The owners of Ranbaxy Laboratories, the Malvinder and Shivinder Singh families, may sell a small part of their equity to private equity firms to raise money for the potential acquisition of Merck’s $5.2-billion generic business, reports The Economic Times. The report says the Singhs could sell about [...]