Mumbai-based private equity fund Blue River Capital has picked up an undisclosed minority stake in freight management company Wilson Sandhu Logistics (WSL) for Rs 45 crore. India Infoline Investment Banking was the advisor in the deal. Wilson Sandhu Logistics is engaged in freight forwarding, ship chartering, container leasing and movement of air and sea cargo.
The [...]

Tata Group’s overtures for acquiring global luxury hospitality chain, Orient Express, has taken an interesting turn. After the Tatas’ offer was dismissed by the Orient management, now a group of hedge funds, who have a combined equity interest of around one third of the total in Orient-Express Hotels, has approached buyers, including the Tata group. [...]

There is a thing or two to learn from this exit deal of UTI Ventures. One is that the Indian software product companies are not all that bad an investment. Second, early stage investment in India can get you bumper returns (of course, if your investment is right).
The Bangalore-based venture-turned-growth capital private equity firm has [...]

Talent retention may not be easy going forward for the country’s largest private banking group, ICICI Bank. After the bank decided to put off annual bonuses to its staff along with annual promotions, now its I-banking and brokerage arm ICICI Securities(which is in the process of going public) is finding few takers for its employee [...]

Former ICICI Venture investment director Aluri Srinivasa Rao will head the soon-to-be set-up private equity arm of Morgan Stanley in India. Morgan Stanely already has an investment bank and an asset management arm in the country. It had parted ways with JM Financial last year to go solo in India. The new private equity arm [...]

Now some Norwegian capital is waiting to be deployed in India. A new Oslo-based private equity fund– The Indo-Nordic Private Equity AS - will invest Rs 400 crore (500 million Norwegian kroners) in India’s energy sector. The fund was launched last week in Oslo by Indian Ambassador Mahesh Sachdev and Norway’s richest man Stein Erik [...]

Argonaut Private Equity is reportedly inceasing its stake in Chennai-based telecom equipment maker Midas Communications, a company incubated by alumni of IIT Madras. Business Standard reports that Argonaut may invest Rs 12 crore into the company, which has drawn up a Rs 100 crore expansion plan. In 2003, Argonaut had invested $10 million in Midas.
The [...]

It may be better to be late than never for American telco AT&T. After exiting India in 2004 by selling of its stake in Idea Cellular (then called Birla AT&T), the telecommunications giant is reportedly looking at re-entering the India’s fast growing mobile telephony market via a stake acquisition. AT&T is in talks with Malaysia’s [...]

The government has announced tighter intra-circle M&A norms for telecommunications services business. The new guidelines mandates prior approval of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for merger of telecom licences. The merger will be restricted to the same service area (telecom circle). Another condition is that mergers would be allowed provided that at least four service [...]

Global private equity firm Warburg Pincus has announced the closure of a $15 billion global fund - christened as Warburg Pincus Private Equity X. The New York based firm would invest in core industry sectors focusing on early-stage, growth and late-stage businesses across North America, Europe and Asia. What is interesting is the subprime crisis [...]

US venture capital firm Trident Capital is looking to invest $150 million in India over the next three years. This will be done out of its seventh global fund that is going to be raised this year. Trident expects to raise between $600 million and $800 million ifor the new fund.
Mint reports, quoting the firm’s [...]

Dutch financial institution Rabobank is planning to set up a $100 million private equity fund in India which will focus on the agriculture value chain. According to a report, the fund is expected to invest in small and medium-sized companies ranging from contract farming at the primary end apart from intermediaries in the agricultural supply [...]

India-focused real estate fund Trikona Trinity Capital has roped in German institutional investor SachsenFonds as an equity partner in its existing and some of the new projects. The total equity commitment from Sachsen is $160 million, of which $126 million will go to existing projects and $34 million will go to new projects, reports Hindustan [...]

The proposed preferential allotment of shares by Karnataka Bank to International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private equity arm of the World Bank, has fallen through as Reserve Bank of India has opposed the deal. IFC was to pick up 4.9 per cent in the PSU bank in a deal worth Rs 140 crore ($ 35 [...]

The owners of media company NDTV Ltd, Radhika and Prannoy Roy, have diluted their holding in NDTV even as there is a promoter buyback is on. According to stock market disclosures, the duo have sold 7.85 per cent stake in NDTV, fetching them around Rs 200-215 crore. A Reuters report said that the stake diluted [...]