Tesla Inc chief Elon Musk is set to acquire micro-blogging site Twitter for about $44 billion. Back home, India Inc, too, is seeing aggressive merger and acquisition (M&A) activity with PVR-Inox and HDFC-HDFC Bank announcing their mergers recently. While Axis Bank recently acquired Citi India's India retail business, reports suggest Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI) and Mindtree could be eyeing a merger.
In January, Visa's chief executive officer, Al Kelly, said during an earnings call that "there's been a burst of the balloon in valuations in the fintech world". Noting that the trend of lower valuations "is a helpful characteristic of the current environment", he added: "We will look for capabilities and management teams that will bring more value to Visa than we can bring ourselves." Data from KPMG's Pulse of Fintech H2'22 shows that global fintech investment - via mergers and acquisitions (M&As), private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms - at $164.1 billion in 2022, was down 31 per cent over the year before. Indian fintechs held up better during this timeframe, attracting $6 billion, or a fall of 24 per cent.
The income tax department has allowed non-resident taxpayers not having PAN to file Form 10F manually till March 31, 2023, a move which would ease their compliance burden and enable them to claim lower TDS rate. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) had in July made it mandatory for non-resident taxpayers to file Form 10F electronically to claim benefit of lower Tax Deducted at Source (TDS). However, taxpayers faced problems in electronic filing of the form as the income tax portal did not allow a taxpayer who does not have a Permanent Account Number (PAN) to file Form 10F.
HUL believes that post Covid, the awareness about health and wellbeing and selfcare, has exploded and there is a mindset change from health as absence of disease, to health as a part of lifestyle.
Mergers & acquisitions started off on a strong footing, hitting a four-year high at $30.3 billion in the first quarter of 2022, bucking the global trend where deal-making fell sharply, says a report. Deal activity grew by 5.6 per cent in value terms in January-March 2022 compared to the first quarter of 2021, making it the highest first-quarter period since 2018 when it was $31.1 billion. In volume terms, the M&A activity grew 29.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2022, making it the best-ever quarterly number, according to the M&A numbers collated by Refinitiv, an LSEG business, which is among the world's largest providers of financial markets data and infrastructure. M&As involving domestic companies stood at $23.7 billion, down 8.3 per cent on year.
Companies planning merger and acquisition (M&A) will have to disclose the extent of "complementary linkages" among them and their impact on the market. This comes under the revised reporting requirements of the Competition Commission of India (CCI). The changes will take effect on May 1. Entities may also have to provide market-facing data of the past five years with respect to their market size, the market share of the parties, and also that of the competitors, along with customers and suppliers.
'India has a lot of potential, not just in commercial aspects, but also in hiring of people and sourcing of products.'
Three business houses are likely to be in the final race to strike a deal with Germany's Metro AG for investing in its India unit -- Metro Cash & Carry. Industry sources in the know named Reliance, Adani Group, and Thailand's conglomerate Charoen Pokphand (CP) as potential frontrunners to acquire a partial or full stake in the Gurugram-headquartered Metro Cash & Carry, which has 31 stores and 5,000 direct employees. Around 20 companies, including strategic and private equity investors, were approached by the German chain, inviting them to bid for the Indian wholesale business, according to a source aware of the M&A developments.
As per The Verge, the lawsuit was filed in Delaware's court of chancery on Tuesday, accusing Musk of hypocrisy.
Days after completing a $6.5 billion acquisition of Ambuja Cements and ACC, billionaire Gautam Adani said his group has planned to double cement manufacturing capacity and become the most profitable manufacturer in the country. He saw a multifold rise in cement demand in India on the back of record-breaking economic growth and the government's infrastructure creation push, which will give significant margin expansion. In a speech made at an event to mark the completion of the acquisition on September 17, the Adani Group founder and chairman said the ports-to-energy conglomerate has in a single stroke become the second largest cement manufacturer in the country.
Total foreign direct investment into India rose 2 per cent to the "highest ever" $83.57 billion in 2021-22 on account of various measures like policy reforms and ease of doing business taken by the government, the commerce and industry ministry said on Friday. Total FDI comprises equity inflows, reinvested earnings and other capital. In 2020-21, the inflow stood at $81.97 billion. It was $74.39 billion in 2019-20 and $62 billion in 2018-19. "India has recorded the highest ever annual FDI inflow of $83.57 billion in 2021-22," the ministry noted in a statement.
An additional criterion in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) may require digital businesses to secure approval from the Competition Commission of India (CCI), the anti-trust regulator. The government is set to introduce a minimum threshold "transaction value" of Rs 2,000 crore (around $250 million) for any deal as a criterion for notification to the anti-trust regulator if the entity being acquired has substantial operations in India. The new criterion is learnt to be part of the proposed amendments to the two-decade-old Competition law, which is expected to be tabled in the ongoing monsoon session of Parliament.
Byju's, Flipkart, PharmEasy and CRED, among others, have taken the acquisition route to grow
Foreign Direct Investment into India rose by 13 per cent in 2020, boosted by interest in the digital sector, and while fund flows "declined most strongly" in major economies such as the UK, the US and Russia due to the Covid-19 pandemic, India and China "bucked the trend", the UN has said.
Domestic mergers and acquisitions transactions led the pack with 32 deals amounting to $5 billion.
Foreign Direct Investment flows to India in 2021 were 26 per cent lower, mainly because large M&A deals recorded in 2020 were not repeated, the UN trade body has said.
The domestic deal-making activities were hit by weak corporate governance and a huge liquidity crunch in 2019, while the global deals were also hard to come by due to various factors including uncertainties caused by the US-China trade war, which left many investors in a wait-and-watch mode.
'To set up a successful business, one must have a solution to an existing problem or a better way of addressing the current solution.'
The heightened activity level in the M&A landscape during 2018 is set to spill over to 2019 as deal fundamentals are expected to remain robust, says Mahesh Singhi.
The top four Indian IT firms have cash reserves of nearly $15 billion with TCS alone holding $5.9 billion in reserves, followed by Infosys with $3.6 billion, and Wipro with $3.4 billion. HCL Technologies has cash reserves of $1.75 billion.
On the volume side, the number of M&A and PE deals was 110 in July, 15 per cent lower from 130 in July 2018.
Dealmakers and advisors feel investors are shifting their focus to Asia Pacific, especially India, owing to geopolitical instability driven by events such as Brexit and protectionist trade wars.
With $120 billion worth of deals, 2018 was the best year on record. Many also blame frequent policy flip-flops and increasing tax scrutiny as big dampners for business.
Billionaire Gautam Adani on Sunday won the race to acquire Swiss cement major Holcim's stake in Ambuja Cements and its subsidiary ACC for $10.5 bn (around Rs 81,361 crore), including the open offers. The Adani family, through an offshore special-purpose vehicle, announced that it had entered into definitive agreements for the acquisition of Holcim Ltd's entire stake in two of India's leading cement companies -- Ambuja Cements and ACC -- the Adani group said in a statement. The group outbid Ultratech and JSW group to enter the cement industry and also emerge as the country's second-largest cement manufacturer, with 70 million tonnes of capacity annually.
'Start-ups that generate a majority of their income in India are likely to opt for an Indian listing.'
Sebi has amended rules pertaining to delisting of equity shares of a company following an open offer as part of efforts to make merger and acquisition transactions for listed companies more convenient. Under the new framework, promoters or acquirers need to disclose their intention to delist the firm through an initial public announcement, according to a notification. If the acquirer is desirous of delisting the target company, the acquirer must propose a higher price for delisting with suitable premium over open offer price. In case the open offer is for an indirect acquisition, the open offer price and indicative price will be notified by the acquirer at the time of making the detailed public statement and in the letter of offer.
Tech sectors, including start-ups and IT & ITeS, witnessed the highest consolidation, capturing over 40 per cent of volumes
In the last couple of months, the IT and BPO space has seen a big uptick in M&A activities, with companies merging with other entities to become bigger players.
Driven by a historic IPO boom that saw 63 issuers, led by new-age tech companies, garnering a whopping Rs 1.2 lakh crore ($16.6 billion) from the primary market, investment bankers laughed their way to the bank collecting $1.1 billion in fees in the year just gone by, making it the highest-ever advisory fees collected, says an industry report. At $16.6 billion, the initial public offers (IPO) set a lifetime record in 2021, bettering the previous record of $10.8 billion in 2017 by a wider margin. While the number of IPOs more than doubled from a year ago to 63, the proceeds were more than four-times the amount raised from the same period previous year and the momentum is likely to continue as more IPOs are anticipated next year, with mother of all issues, LIC issue, expected to boost proceeds next year much higher, it said.
Byju's, says Anita Kishore, has given the founders of the businesses it has acquired the independence to operate separately and maintain their core culture.
With the Indian economy expected to emerge as the third largest by 2030, investors have earmarked significant capital to actively participate in the India growth story.
Banks have Rs 10 trillion in stressed assets - Rs 7.8 trillion of bad loans and Rs 2.2 trillion of restructured ones.
One reason Japan is betting highly on Indian pharma is that these companies have strong cash flows, low leverage and high debt capacity for medium to large sized acquisitions.
For last two months, much of the discussion, a large part of due diligence, agreement negotiations, etc, have happened remotely.
Private equity (PE) is set to play a bigger role in banks. Of 21 recommendations accepted by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) out of 31 made by its Internal Working Group (IWG), its stance on non-promoter holdings in private banks is seen with excitement, though it doesn't refer to PEs explicitly. On non-promoter holdings in these banks, the RBI said this will be capped at 10 per cent of the paid-up voting equity share capital in the case "of natural persons and non-financial institutions and entities"; and "at 15 per cent for all categories of financial institutions, entities, supranational institutions, public sector undertaking, or the government." While this is a modification of the IWG's stance for the non-promoter holding in banks at up to 15 per cent, it does open up a huge window for PEs, all the same. This is because, while the RBI has remained silent on the eligibility of industrial houses for bank licences, fresh high-quality capital in large amounts can only come from PEs.
However, the number of transactions declined to 76 in January-March this year from 110 in the year-ago quarter.
'On an average we have been getting four to five such proposals a month, but we aren't pursuing them as they don't tick the boxes.'
Several airlines, hotels, travel and tourism companies are expected to move their applications for one-time restructuring as soon as the moratorium ends.
Notwithstanding the challenges posed by the pandemic, the deal street remained buoyant pushing the overall deal value to a three-year high of $90.4 billion during the first nine months of 2021, a 35.1 per cent increase in value over the same period last year, according to an industry report. During the third quarter ending September, total deals grew by a tepid 3.8 per cent, according to the leading provider of financial markets data and infrastructure globally Refinitiv, an LSEG Business. The report also noted that IPOs alone grabbed as much as $9.1 billion of the deal value during the year.
Prosus-backed fintech firm PayU is set to acquire India's earliest payment gateway BillDesk in an all-cash transaction of $4.7 billion. This will be the largest acquisition in India's digital payments space. The deal will also give exit to investors General Atlantic, TA Associates, Temasek, Clearstone Ventures, and Visa. The proposed acquisition will help PayU, the payments and fintech business of Prosus which operates in more than 20 markets, become one of the leading online payment providers globally by total payment volume (TPV).
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