US-based Wayne Burt Capital, an investor cum operator of industrial assets led by a team of executives of Indian origin, is planning to invest $100-150 million to acquire distressed companies in the power and petrochemical sectors in the country, the company said at a media briefing in Chennai on Tuesday.
In particular it is looking to acquire two petrochemical companies-one based in south India and another in the west in Maharashtra. In addition, it is also likely to snap a 160 MW thermal power company in Tamil Nadu, said TGS Mahesh, president & CEO of Wayne Burt Capital.
Wayne Burt, which styles itself as a deep value fund with assets of $1 billion, has offices in India, the US, London, Dubai and Singapore. The firm's Indian office is located at Chennai and is backed by investors in the US and Europe.
Its three main areas of business exposure include petrochemicals, aerospace and oil & gas.
In the oil & gas field, it portfolio firms manufacture high precision, specialised, complex deep hole drilling equipment/wire line tools for global OEMS such as Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Chevron and Schlumberger.
Its aerospace portfolio firm manufactures components for aircraft/rocket engines for OEMs such as GE, Pratt & Whitney, UTAS and Rolls Royce.
Both oil & gas and aerospace businesses have manufacturing and design & engineering facilities spread across Singapore, the US and India.
In the petrochemicals area it is into manufacturing of refinery solvents such as MEK and SBA with technical collaboration from Edeleanu, Germany. It is also establishing its MIBK/MIBC/HG/DAA plant in collaboration with Shell technology at the manufacturing facility located in India.
Last year, it acquired Chennai-based Cetex Petrochemicals Ltd, a chemical manufacturing company. Cetex has a manufacturing plant at Manali, north part of Chennai in which Wayne Burt is planning to invest further to up its capacity four times to 80,000 tonnes.
Its other portfolio firms include Kerns Aero Products, Wayne Burt Precision Technologies, Raycom Engineering and Wayne Burt Petrochemicals.
While Wayne Burt Precision Technologies and Raycom Engineering are headquartered in Singapore, the other there are based in India.
It is led by Mahesh, a first generation technocrat entrepreneur & investment banker who has worked on multiple portfolios in cross border transactions between the US, Europe, Singapore, India.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
