C Sivasankaran Group firms have hiked holding in edible oil firm KS Oils to close to 9% over the last few weeks. Baring Private Equity and New Silk Route-backed edible oil firm earlier had Citigroup Venture Capital as investor.
Privately held investment firms, said to be part of the Siva Group, have together acquired over 6% stake over the past few weeks adding to the 2.17% stake held by Siva Trade Consultancy in KS Oils as of September 30. This has made Sivasankaran the second largest institutional investor in the company behind New Silk Route that held little over 10% in the company as of end September.
Serial investor Siva had been active in picking stake in listed companies in India in either sectors in which his group already has a presence or as sectoral play (as in case of oil).
Most recently his group firm acquired 1.5% in Sujana Towers, a company that is engaged in manufacturing telecom and power towers. This gels with Siva Group’s privately-held entity Siva Projects Engineering and Enterprises Limited (SPEEL).
SPEEL acquired the stake in Sujana Towers for around Rs 19.23 crore ($4.2 million) on Tuesday. SPEEL is engaged in developing passive infrastructure for mobile communication towers and related services including operations & maintenance for tower operators.
These investments are coming as the broader valuations in the stock market has corrected sharply by around 10-15% after matching the highest ever level, last seen in January 2008. KS Oils among some other firms have been in the news recently with reports of official investigations for price rigging.