Discovery Capital, UK-based hedge fund Marshall Wace and others have joined buyout firms Carlyle and Farallon to buy a stake in Yes Bank, two people familiar with the matter told The Economic Times.
These players, along with domestic investors such as Aditya Birla Mutual Fund and HDFC Mutual Fund, are keen to have a share of the pie in Yes Bank over and above a binding bid from a global investor for a $1.2 billion stake.
“After a fair amount of due diligence, we have eight very strong bids from top global private equity firms and some domestic firms,” Yes Bank chief executive and managing director, Ravneet Gill, had said in an analyst call last week. “If you look at these eight bids, they themselves aggregate to over $1.5 billion.”
Yes Bank may also give board seats to a few investors, the report said.
Billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala on Monday bought 12.9 million shares of the bank at Rs 67.1 apiece in a secondary market deal.
Meanwhile, logistics startup Delhivery Pvt. Ltd is in early talks with Blue Dart Express Ltd and Gati Ltd to acquire their B2B operations, two persons aware of the matter told Mint.
Gurugram-based Delhivery had joined the unicorn club after raising $413 million in a Series F round led by SoftBank Vision Fund and joined by existing investors Carlyle Group and Fosun International in March.
In September, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) bought an 8% stake in Delhivery for $115 million from an existing investor.
“It’s not an unusual idea to look out for M&As. And since Blue Dart has a pretty strong franchise business in India, it is attractive to Delhivery from a B2B business perspective,” said one of the people cited above.
According to the person, logistics businesses usually receive the highest order values from direct corporate tie-ups, a strong point of Blue Dart.
“Delhivery brings reporting and management technologies that can be very disruptive for traditional logistics players,” Anup Jain, managing partner at Orios Venture Partners, said in the report.
In another development, I Squared Capital-owned Cube Highways and a platform of private infrastructure investor Roadis and National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) have expressed interest in buying Ashoka Concessions Ltd, owned by developer Ashoka Buildcon and Macquarie Infrastructure, two people aware of the development told Mint.
Media reports in September said that Ashoka Buildcon and Macquarie Infrastructure were seeking buyers for Ashoka Concessions.
Ashoka Concessions’ roads portfolio comprises 15 assets, including six operational BOT (build, operate, transfer) toll projects, one operational BOT annuity project and eight under-construction hybrid annuity projects.
“NIIF-Roadis platform and Cube Highways have submitted their initial offers to acquire these roads,” said one of the two people cited above.
