IL&FS Investment Managers Ltd (IL&FS PE), the only public-listed private equity fund manager in the country, plans to buy out its Japanese partner's stake in its project development fund, it said on Tuesday.
IL&FS PE currently holds 51% stake in IL&FS Asian Infrastructure Managers Ltd (IAIML), which manages Pan Asia Project Development Fund, India, with a corpus of Rs 112.5 crore. This investment firm had four portfolio firms as on March 31, 2015 and IL&FS PE was looking to exit them.
The PE firm is now looking to buy Japan-based financial services firm Orix Corp's 49% in IAIML for Rs 2.7crore, based on independent valuation.
The company's board has approved the transaction, it said in a stock market disclosure.
Fundraising and exits
IL&FS PE, once India's top PE fund managers by assets under management before it lost that position to IDFC Alternatives, had lately been focusing on managing exits from legacy funds. Tough the fundraising environment had impacted the firm, it is now eyeing some fundraising milestones in this financial year ending March 31, 2017 for initiatives started in the last two years.
The company expects to wrap up fundraising process for its new growth PE fund by September. In February 2015, it had made the first close of its new sector agnostic growth fund Tara India Fund IV at $40 million (then Rs 250 crore). It was targeting final close of this fund by the end of 2015 which has now got pushed to the first half of this financial year.
It was looking to enhance the corpus of this fund to around $100 million, as per last year's annual report of the firm.
Its predecessor investment vehicle Tara India Fund III raised $225 million in 2008.
IL&FS PE that invests across three asset classes, including real estate and infrastructure besides the sector agnostic growth funds, is also eyeing the first close of its infrastructure fund and real estate yield fund.
Archana Hingorani, CEO of IL&FS PE, said there has been a marked progress in marketing the core products, although the response is slower than expected.
It is also awaiting clearance from the capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to buy the infrastructure debt fund business of parent IL&FS Financial Services Ltd.
Meanwhile, the PE firm ramped up its exit activity significantly during last financial year. It closed with exits worth Rs 2,189 crore against Rs 1,171 crore the previous year and FY2013-14's tally of Rs 975 crore.
Directors
IL&FS PE also disclosed two board level movements with Siddharth Mehta (non-executive independent director) and Shahzaad Dalal (non-executive director) resigning from the board.