A clutch of private equity investors including CVC Capital Partners, Temasek Holdings, Warburg Pincus and Multiples Alternate Asset Management have evinced interest to acquire the animal health business of Cadila Healthcare Ltd at a valuation of up to Rs 2,500 crore (about $343 million), multiple people aware of the development told The Economic Times.
Non-binding bids will be submitted by the end of February, one of the sources said. The proceeds will be used by Cadila Healthcare for debt reduction. It had consolidated debt of Rs 8,000 crore (about $1.09 billion) at the end of March 2020.
Meanwhile, Canadian pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) is in the final stages of discussions with a Tata Sons subsidiary to acquire the Durg Bypass, assigning a value of about Rs 800 crore (about $109 million) to the project that’s part of the arterial highway connecting Mumbai with Kolkata. The development was reported by The Economic Times, which cited multiple people aware of the talks.
One of the sources said that CDPQ has already signed a term sheet for buying the operational asset of Tata Realty and Infrastructure Ltd (TRIL).
TRIL has been weighing the option of exiting the road business by selling four of its projects. It was in discussions with Singapore’s sovereign fund GIC Pvt. Ltd to sell all the assets. However, the deal did not materialize.
Earlier, CDPQ was in discussions with TRIL for setting up a road platform that would have been the fund’s entry vehicle into Indian road assets. However, the talks did not result in a deal.
Besides the Durg Bypass, TRIL has another operational road project – the 110km Pune-Solapur Expressway on NH65 in Maharashtra. Its two under-construction projects are the 120km Hospet to Chitradurga section of Hampi Expressway on NH13 in Karnataka, and the 93.5km Chittorgarh to Udaipur stretch of Uchit Expressway on NH76 in Rajasthan.
In another development, renewable energy producer ReNew Power is exploring a merger with one of the US-listed blank cheque financiers, also known as special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which will make ReNew the first Indian company to tap the capital markets through the SPAC route, according to a report in The Economic Times, which cited people aware of the development.
Parallelly, it is in ongoing discussions with Thai energy giant PTT Group for up to a $600 million (about Rs 4,370 crore) investment.
A merger into a SPAC would give ReNew easier access to the capital markets, help raise primary capital for the growth of the company and also offer full or partial exit to existing investors such as Goldman Sachs, CPPIB and ADIA among others who have been seeking a “liquidity event” for long.