ChrysCapital's Managing Director Ashish Dhawan has just raised his personal holding in Allsec Technologies to more than 5 percent, however the value of his holdings have come down by two-third. Probably he can set off these losses against the profits from other deals.
Ashish Dhawan bought a large chunk of shares between September and December 2007. As of December 31, 2007 his personal holding in Allsec was 7 lakh shares representing 4.59 percent of the company. Given the average price during the quarter he would have paid close to Rs 9.5 crore for acquiring this stake. He added more shares (apparently after the market crash in January) during the first quarter of 2008 to take it up to 4.92 percent.
Over the last two months he bought more shares to take the total holdings to 5.03 percent. While the estimated cost of his investments works out to be close to Rs 10 crore the worth of his holdings in Allsec today is down to just Rs 3.3 crore.
Interestingly, while his firm ChrysCap escaped investing in India when the market was approaching the peak, he himself ended up investing at the wrong time and has lost two thirds of his investments in Allsec. The recent share purchases appear to be more of an averaging out strategy.
Incidentally, Allsec happens to be part of the portfolio of First Carlyle Ventures. It had entered into a deal to pick a substantial stake (around 21 percent) in the firm in 2006 and later came up with an open offer which wasn't too successful in garnering shares. As of June 2008, First Carlyle held 27.5 percent in Allsec.
However, nothing beats the value erosion for First Carlye, who invested at a price of Rs 260 per share as against the current market price of Rs 43 for Allsec, negative return of more than 80 percent!
