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Ambit Corporate Finance, a Mumbai-based fast growing investment bank, is looking for a global partner. But the firm is willing to shed only a minority stake in favour of the global biggie. In an interview to Business Standard, Ashok Wadhwa, CEO of Ambit, said that they need a global partner to build a thriving institutional broking business. "The biggest challenge will be to build the institutional brokerage business. Institutional sales are a relationship-driven business. Having a global partner will be good. However, all global companies want a majority equity stake. That’s the problem," he said.
He added: "Should there be a global firm that is prepared to accept a minority stake, we could consider an alliance. Our independence is more valuable to us."
Besides the institutional broking business, Ambit is also looking at wealth management for retail investors. Wadhwa says there is gap in that space since the retail segment is not adequately served by the existing commercial banks despite having a captive client base.
Besides, Wadhwa said that the firm will also look at lending (no details, though, on this) as a business opportunity in the future, and it's likely they will look at raising capital for this. "Currently, we don’t do any lending business. We will need to raise capital to do so. Unlike all our competitors, we don’t run a proprietary business. We will clearly need to raise capital in the near future." And lastly, Wadhwa may probably look at listing his firm to offer liquidity for the employees who hold a significant number of options.