The Tata Group restructures shareholding pattern in North Indian Plantation Operations

The shareholding pattern of Amalgamated Plantations Private Limited (APPL), the new company formed by Tata Tea after restructuring its North Indian Plantation Operations (NIPO), is close to finalization. The Tata Group will hold 33-35% in APPL through Tata Investment Corporation (15%) and Tata Tea (18-20%). IL&FS and the World Bank private equity firm IFC will hold 20% stakes each in APPL, while consultancy firm Globally Managed Services will hold 12%. The balance 13-15% will be held by employees and workers of the company.

The company has received SEBI approval for the formation of APPL. Once we get shareholders’ approval, the company will come into existence with effect from April 1, 2007. The transaction process, however, remains to be completed.

Read more in The Economic Times article.
Related Post:
Tata Tea to divest stake in tea plantations to IFC, IL&FS, workers

TCS sells 40% stake Sitel India to JV partner Sitel for $17.73 mn

Business Standard reports that Tata Consultancy Services has divested its 40% stake in the BPO firm Sitel India to US-based Sitel Corporation for $17.732 mn. Sitel India is a joint venture between the Tata Group and Sitel Corporation, formed in 2000, with both parties holding 50% of the equity. Tata International, which holds 10% stake in the JV, has also agreed to sell its stake. The joint venture company provides voice-based contact centre BPO services from India. With over 4000 professionals, the JV is a provider of fully integrated customer care and back office processing services operating from five centers in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Gurgaon.

Ashok Leyland, M&M lead Punjab Tractors bid race; TAFE, Tatas back out, Tata Group buys plant in South Africa

Ashok Leyland Limited and Mahindra & Mahindra Limited appear to be the frontrunners in the race to acquire a stake of around 43% in Punjab Tractors Limited. The 43% stake has been put on the block by owners, Delhi-based private equity fund Actis and the Burman family, promoter of Dabur. According to unconfirmed reports, Ashok Leyland has placed a higher bid in the range of Rs. 320-380 per share. The Ashok Leyland bid demands some guarantees from the management. Details of M&M’s bid were not known.

If it does eventually manage to acquire the share, Ashok Leyland will have to make a mandatory open offer of another 20% of Punjab Tractors and would eventually become a majority shareholder of the company. An announcement on the stake sale is expected shortly. However, it is still not clear whether Leyland has also managed to acquire the 14% stake Punjab Tractors holds in group company Swaraj Mazda Limited and the 33% stake in Swaraj Engines Limited through the bidding process.

Punjab Tractors has strong brand equity in the tractor market, especially in the northern part of India and the winning bidder could enter the fast-growing tractor segment through this acquisition.

In a related development, of the four front-runners, the Tata Group, uncomfortable with the valuation of the deal, has backed out of the bidding process, while Tractor and Farm Equipment (TAFE) is also believed to have pulled out of the race. The final bids have seen the list of bidders for Punjab Tractors coming down significantly. That list includes Sonalika (International Tractors), Escorts, Italian tractor company Same Duetz-Fahr and a private equity consortium that was backing Punjab Tractors’ former boss Yash Mahajan.

Meanwhile, the Tata Group has acquired a car making plant in Pretoria in South Africa for an undisclosed amount, which will be used as a base for Tata Motors exports to Europe, besides catering to the South African market.

Read the articles in DNA Money and Business Standard.
Related Post: Actis and the Burmans seek re-bids for Punjab Tractors

Cummins buys out Tata Group’s stake in Tata Holset

The $11.4 bn-Cummins, Inc. will acquire the stake held by the Tata Group companies in Tata Holset, its over 12-year old 50:50 JV for an undisclosed sum. It has been rechristened as Cummins Turbo Technologies. The company manufactures turbo chargers for medium and heavy-duty diesel engines for power generation, off-highway and on-highway vehicles. The Tata stake in the JV was held by Tata Motors, Tata Industries and Tata International.

Cummins recently announced a unified branding strategy to align its family of businesses under the Cummins brand. Following this new initiative, Tata Holset will be renamed and re-branded as Cummins Turbo Technologies.

Cummins, Inc. has another equal joint venture with the Tata Group called Tata Cummins, based in Jamshedpur. It manufactures the Cummins B series of engines and will not be affected by equity changes in Tata Holset / Cummins Turbo Technologies.

Read more in The Economic Times article.

Tata Group forms Tata Realty & Infrastructure with Rs. 4500 crore-fund

The Tata Group has promoted a real estate arm, Tata Realty & Infrastructure, which will invest in infrastructure and real estate projects. The company has a corpus of Rs. 4500 crores. Dinesh Chandiok, the former CEO of Ansal Properties to head Tata Realty, will lead the initiative.

Apart from the Tatas, foreign investors too would be sponsors of the fund. There would be different fund schemes for different projects in phases. International Consultancy firm KPMG has been involved in strategizing the Tatas’ real estate business. Tata Realty would look at investing in housing complexes, special economic zones and construction of bridges, ports and airports.

Read more in The Times of India article.

Tata Group not to exercise government call option; will hike VSNL stake via market purchase

The Tata Group will increase its stake in group company Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) through market acquisitions instead of buying the government’s 26.12% residual stake in VSNL through the exercise of a call option.

The Tata Group has a combined effective shareholding of over 50% in VSNL. The government divested VSNL in 2001, with Tatas acquiring the majority stake in the company. However, the government was holding on to 26.12% stake in the company that gave it a controlling power and two nominees on its board.

Panatone Finvest (a Tata Group entity) holds 40.7% in VSNL, while Tata Sons has 8.51%, Tata Power holds 0.09% and Government of India holds 26.12%. Institutional investors and individuals hold the remaining stake in the company. The government was earlier ready to dispose of the residual stake, but had asked for a golden share in the company. A golden share means that the government would sell its 26.12 per cent stake in the company and in return ask for a single share with controlling stake. This was not acceptable to the Tatas.

Read the Business Standard article.

The Tata Group may hive off water business

The Tata Group may spin off its bottled water business into a separate company. The group’s bottled water business currently includes a 30% stake in US’ third largest bottled water company Energy Brands, Inc. (Glaceau). The group is also believed to be in talks to acquire Dadi Balsara’s Himalayan water brand. Energy Brands is an associate company of the group. Tata Tea holds a 25% stake in it, while the remaining 5% is held by a subsidiary of Tata Sons, the Tata Group’s holding company. The ideal combination is to develop a complete spread of offerings, from tea and coffee to water, under a single company, to cover the entire spectrum of beverage consumption.

Article in Business Standard.

Tatas offload 0.84% in TCS for Rs. 1000 crores

Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group, has raised more than Rs. 1000 crores by selling 0.84% of its equity stake in group company and software major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). This has taken the total amount raised so far to about Rs. 2800 crores (about $622 mn). It is believed that the proceeds could be used for part-funding Tata Steel’s $12.1 bn-acquisition of Corus.

Tata Sons has sold about 8.1 mn equity shares of the software company to an undisclosed buyer. This is the third time in three months that the holding company has diluted its equity stake in TCS, which on December 31, 2006, stood at 78.3%. On February 6, Tata Sons sold 6.9 mn equity shares raising Rs. 900 crores. In a similar transaction in November 2006, Tata Sons raised another Rs. 900 crores by diluting 0.86% of its stake in TCS. A bulk of it was sold to Mauritius-based HSBC Global Investment Fund.

Read the article in The Economic Times.

Tata Group ups stake in TTML by 3.5%

The Tata Group has raised its stake in Tata Teleservices Maharashtra (TTML), its publicly listed telecom company. TTML provides telecommunication services in the states of Goa and Maharashtra. The group’s holding in the company has now gone up from 65.5% to 69%. Tata Sons has picked up the unsubscribed portion of TTML’s recent rights issue, thereby increasing its stake by 11%, from 7.86% equity to 18.68%. Tata Teleservices, the Tata Group’s flagship telecom company and the single largest shareholder in Tata Teleservices Maharashtra did not subscribe to the rights issue. Consequently its holding has now decreased from 46.98% to 39%. The other group companies including Tata Power, Tata Investment Corporation and Panatone Finvest have maintained their equity stake by subscribing to the rights issue.

Of late, the Tata Group has been quite in news for such corporate moves where it has raised stake in some group companies including Tata Tea and Tata Coffee. The total indirect foreign holding in TTML would also go down as Tata Teleservices, the parent company of TTML, has foreign equity holding from Singapore government’s private equity arm Temasek Holdings. The board of TTML had approved a rights issue of the size of Rs. 491.14 crores on January 12, 2007 through an aggregate of 288.91 mn equity shares at a price of Rs. 17 per share. The date of allotment of the share was January 17, 2007.

Read The Economic Times article.

Tata Motors to bid for Daewoo Romania

The Tata Group is planning to buy Daewoo Automobile Romania. Daewoo Romania was established in 1994 as a 51:49 JV between the Daewoo Group and the Romanian government.

The Romanian plant can produce 100,000 cars, 150,000 engines and 200,000 trans-axles. Bidding for Daewoo Automobile Romania, would heat up because of interest from global automobile giants such as Ford and Renault-Nissan and the Tata Group, which is in the middle of a bidding war with Brazil’s CSN for the Anglo-Dutch steel-maker Corus. Daewoo Automobile Romania makes a range of Daewoo vehicles like the Matiz, Cielo, Nubira and Tacuma, and 1.5 litre petrol engines.

Daewoo was bought over by General Motors in 1999, but the US giant did not take over the Romanian venture. Recently, the Romanian government bought out Daewoo’s stake for $50 million and restructured the $10 million of the company’s debt.

Tata Motors last year acquired Nissan’s South Africa plant for an undisclosed amount. The year before, it took over Daewoo Commercial Vehicles for $102 mn.

Read the Business Standard article.

Tata Group in talks to acquire Sri Lanka’s Suntel

The Tata Group is in talks to buy out Suntel, Sri Lanka’s premier private telecom operator, through group company VSNL’s international arm, VSNL Global. VSNL Global recently bagged international long distance (ILD) and internet service provider (ISP) licenses in Sri Lanka, and is hoping to expand inorganically to become an integrated telecom player in the island nation.

If the deal is successful, Suntel will be VSNL’s third telecom service provider outside India. VSNL already has 51% stake in Neotel, South Africa’s second national operator, and is also in the process of picking up 26% in InfraCo, a new telecom network operator in South Africa.

Suntel is the largest fixed-line competitor to incumbent Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) and has a subscriber base of about 250,000. It offers a range of voice, data, ISDN, dedicated packet solutions and internet services. Suntel is a joint venture between Swedish telecom giant Overseas Telecom, Metrocorp, Townsend of Hong Kong, National Development Bank, and International Finance Corporation (IFC), private equity arm of the World Bank Group. Suntel’s net profit for the six months to June 30 dipped by LKR 93 mn year-on-year to LKR 290 mn, while revenues virtually doubled to LKR 3.31 bn from LKR 1.96 bn a year earlier.

Read The Economic Times article.

Texas Pacific pulls out of investing in SpiceJet

Private equity giant Texas Pacific Group is pulling out of its $30 mn investment in low-cost airline SpiceJet. Reasons cited are as varied as differences over valuation to the US-based fund having expressed its inability to participate in this round of fund-raising by the low-cost carrier as its top management was busy with an ongoing $11 bn deal for buying out Australian airline, Qantas, by a consortium of private equity players.

In its current round of fund raising, SpiceJet has raised around Rs. 300 crores by divesting around 25% stake, giving the company a valuation of around Rs. 1200 crores. The Tata Group, through two of its investment arms, is picking up 7% stake for Rs. 75 crores. Existing shareholder, Istithmar, Dubai government’s private equity arm, is putting in another $25 mn for increasing its stake from 3% to 11%. BNP Paribas will invest $15 mn for a 4% equity stake, while Goldman Sachs is picking up 1.5% stake for around $5 mn. A clutch of small investors will hold another 4% stake between them.

The company is holding its EGM on Thursday to ratify the preferential allotments. The shares were offered at an average price of Rs. 51.36 per share. After this round of dilution, the stake of the promoters including those of the UK-based Kansagra family, director Ajay Singh and associates, will come down from around 18% to 15%.

Read more in The Economic Times article.

Temasek Holdings buys 10% in Tata Sky for Rs. 250 crores; values the DTH provider at Rs. 2500 crores

Singapore-based private fund Temasek Holdings has invested Rs. 250 crores in Tata Sky, the DTH service joint venture between the Tata Group and Star TV, for a 10% stake, belonging to Tata Group holding company Tata Sons. Following this restructuring, Tata Sons’ stake has been reduced to 70%, while Star continues to maintain its 20% holding. This is Temasek’s second investment in the Tata Group of companies. It had earlier acquired about 10% stake in CDMA service provider Tata Teleservices.

In a related development, Sky TV’s competitor, Dish TV is reportedly in talks with Warburg Pincus for diluting a stake to the latter.

Read the article in The Economic Times.

VSNL may bid $90 mn for US-based Data Return

The Tata Group is making news all around. This time, another group company VSNL, an international long distance telecom major, is reportedly planning a bid for US-based Data Return, which is into managed hosting services and IT operations. The deal size is estimated to be around $90-100 mn. Data Return is a privately-held entity, of which 80% is owned by an investment firm Saratoga Partners and the rest being held by the management. It primarily caters to the North American market and has a headcount of around 250.

Data Return registered revenues of $51.1 mn for the 2005 fiscal and had a net loss of $8.5 mn, with valuation of the company pegged at $85-95 mn. The auction process for the proposed sale has evinced interest from two other bidders.