Skip to main content

Mubadala In Advanced Talks To Invest Up To $1 bn In Reliance Retail: Report

 


Abu Dhabi state fund Mubadala Investment Co is in advanced talks to invest up to $1 billion in the retail division of India's Reliance Industries Ltd, two sources told Reuters, as investor interest in the Indian company surges.

Reliance Retail is on a fund raising spree and has secured around $1.8 billion in the past few weeks from KKR & Co and Silver Lake Partners.

Reliance, controlled by Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani, has approached investors, who collectively pumped more than $20 billion into its Jio Platforms digital business this year, to take stakes in its retail business, which has nearly 12,000 stores and sells everything from groceries and electronics to fashion and shoes.

Mubadala invested around $1.2 billion in Jio Platforms and its executives have held extensive talks in recent weeks with Reliance for investing in its retail venture, several sources familiar with the talks said.

While one source said Mubadala "is ready with" $1 billion for Reliance Retail and doing due diligence, a second source said the talks were at an advanced stage and said the investment could be anywhere between $500 million and $1 billion.

A Reliance spokesman said the company cannot confirm or deny any transaction, adding: the “company evaluates various opportunities on an ongoing basis."

Mubadala declined to comment. It is the second-biggest state investor in Abu Dhabi after Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, managing about $240 billion in assets.

For Mubadala, any further investment into Reliance will come months after it said it was under-invested in Asia and planned to expand its portfolio in the region.

STRONG INVESTOR INTEREST

Reliance is likely to soon announce a few investments into its retail unit, and those will be from investors who recently invested in its digital arm, one of the sources aware of the matter said.

While talks are ongoing with several investors, Reliance believes Facebook and Google, both of which invested in Reliance's digital business, are unlikely to put funds in its retail division due to lack of synergies, another source said.

"Reliance wants the same set of investors ... but some new investors could come in," the source said.

Japan's SoftBank Group had also expressed interest in investing in Reliance Retail, but the talks have not moved forward as the company was prioritising other investors with which it has struck recent deals, the source said.

SoftBank did not respond to a request for comment.

Ambani's push to seek investments in its retail business come as the oil-to-telecoms Indian conglomerate has been looking to expand its e-commerce operations to compete against Walmart's Flipkart and Amazon.com's Indian business.

A separate source said Amazon and Reliance have also been in talks, but there was no certainty of a deal on an investment in Reliance Retail.

"For Amazon, the issue is whether their own ambitions in India will collide with Reliance's," the source added.

An Amazon spokeswoman said the company has no comment on speculation about what it may or may not do in the future.

Sandip Ginodia , CEO

ALTIUS INVESTECH PVT LTD

We deal in over 60 unlisted companies with 15 years of experience 

For latest prices visit : www.abhisheksecurities.com/unlisted.htm / call : 09830271248 .

Email : ginodiasandip1@gmail.com

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reliance's JioMart is averaging half a million orders per day; WhatsApp driving growth

  JioMart , Reliance's online-to-offline commerce  platform that launched in May , has scaled up rapidly, riding on the pandemic-fuelled digital acceleration. The service, which went   live in 200 cities across India, is currently processing an average of  500,000 orders per day. " We can go even higher on peak days",  Jio Platforms CEO   Kiran Thomas  revealed at the Facebook for Fuel India 2020 event. He said, "JioMart is empowering millions of  kiranas  and small merchants through the simple and secure platform of WhatsApp, and linking them to Reliance Retail's pan-India supply chain. We expect to grow manifold in future, and are optimistic about enabling new cohorts of users and making it easier for them to shop for daily essentials."  "Customers are transacting seamlessly on JioMart and the  conversational nature of the service  enabled by WhatsApp has made people adapt to it intuitively," he added. Reliance also stated that it will continue t

Stock broker SMC Global files for IPO

F inancial services company SMC Global Securities has filed draft red herring prospectus with SEBI for public issue of 1,58,67,380 equity shares of face value of Rs 2 each. The issue comprises a fresh issue of 79,33,690 equity shares by the company and an offer for sale of 79,33,690 shares by Millennium India Acquisition Company Inc. As of September 30, 2012, "We service our broking clients through a network of 43 branches and 2,521 registered sub-brokers and authorized persons spread in more than 500 cities and towns. We have also established an office in Dubai for brokerage and trading activities in that region," the company said. SMC has reported a loss of Rs 0.42 crore and total revenues of Rs 292.24 crore in the year ended March 31, 2012. "The proceeds of the fresh issue shall be utilised for margin maintenance with stock exchanges; part repayment of term loan; investments into subsidiary, SMC Comtrade; and general corporate purposes," according to p

TCS merger with TCS e serve

The board of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in its meeting on 18 October 2012 has approved the composite scheme of arrangement between TCS, TCS e-Serve (e-Serve) and TCS e-Serve International (TEIL). The composite scheme of arrangement provides for merger of e-Serve into TCS and demerger of TEIL's special economic zone (SEZ) undertaking(s) to TCS. The appointed date proposed for this scheme is 01 April 2013. TCS holds 96.26% of the paid up equity share capital of e-Serve. TEIL is a wholly owned subsidiary of e-Serve. As per the terms of the scheme of arrangement, shareholders of e-Serve (other than TCS) will receive 13 equity shares of Re 1 each of TCS for every 4 equity shares of Rs 10 each of e-Serve held by them. The board has approved the scheme of merger of Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) and Retail FullServe (RFL) with TCS. The proposed appointed date for the merger of CRL is 01 October 2012 and for the merger of RFL is 01 April 2012. Computational Res