Greater Pacific Capital is exiting its two and half year old investment in Torrent Pharma with around 2x net returns. It sold almost its entire 4.83% stake in the open market earning Rs 221 crore through a bulk deal at BSE.
It sold the shares at Rs 566 a piece. Given the quantum of shares sold, it appears it could have actually exited the investment with the balance shares being sold separately.
Torrent was one of its early investments in India for Greater Pacific Capital that is estimated to have put in around Rs 75 crore (deduced from the shareholding disclosures during the quarter and the average share price of Torrent Pharma).
The year 2007 was also the time when Greater Pacific was closely involved in backing Torrent Pharma’s unsuccessful bid for Merck’s global generics business.
Founded by three former Goldman Sachs honchos Ketal Patel (also the CEO), Joe Sealy and Francis Crispino, Greater Pacific Capital targets investments in India and China. In late 2005, the firm raised capital for its first investment in India to grow a broad based asset manager from a brokerage house. It had its first closure with commitments of $200 million four years ago.
Akshaya Prasad who co-heads the Indian office of the firm is also an ex-Goldman Sachs executive and most recently set up Goldman's infrastructure investment business in India and was part of the senior team managing Goldman Sachs' $6.5-billion Infrastructure Fund.
