In what is the largest-ever infusion of foreign direct investment into India, Russian government-owned energy major Rosneft acquired a 49% stake in the Ruia family-promoted Essar Oil, while Dutch commodity trading firm Trafigura along with Moscow-based fund United Capital Partners bought another 49% for $13 billion (Rs 86,000 crore). The deal includes the sale of Essar Oil’s refining and retail assets as well as a port at Vadinar in Gujarat. While the equity value of the deal is of the order of $6.4 billion, the debt portion is worth about $6.6 billion. This transaction will help the debt-laden Essar Group pay off a significant portion of its Rs 80,000 crore debt.
The week also saw Chennai-based TVS Logistics get a new shareholder on board with Canada’s pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) buying a significant minority stake for $155 million and earlier investors KKR and Goldman Sachs exiting in the process.
Further, in what signals consolidation in the online travel space, Nasdaq-listed MakeMyTrip agreed to buy Ibibo Group, which is co-owned by South Africa’s technology group Naspers and Chinese tech giant Tencent, in a stock deal.
It was a week of big-ticket deals in the IT space. Azim Premji-promoted IT major Wipro agreed to acquire US-based cloud services company Appirio for $500 million in cash. In another deal, IT services giant HCL decided to buy Butler America Aerospace, a US-based engineering services company, for $85 million, in an all-cash transaction, that will help it strengthen its position in engineering services vertical.
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