ADAG investment firm buys 10% in Assam Co

The Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group-owned Reliance Capital Partners, the flagship investment outfit of the group, has picked up close to 10.06 per cent in Assam Company Ltd (ACL) on May 19. Reliance Capital had recently picked up 5.46 per cent in Nicco Corporation.

According to sources in the industry, Reliance Capital has picked up the entire stake through a bulk deal from a Jajodia group company. After the deal, the promoter group will hold 57 per cent in ACL.

According to sources, Reliance Capital has purchased 2.25 crore shares of ACL and the investment was close to Rs 61 crore.

Besides RCP, Quantum Mutual Fund has also picked up 3.35 per cent stake in the outfit from the open market in the last one week. The latest MF entrant bought 75 lakh shares at an investment of Rs 20.25 crore.

Abhay Chawdhry, chief financial officer of Assam Company, confirmed the development. "This is a move to broadbase our shares," he said. ACL currently has 20.2 crore shares of Rs 1 each.

The CFO informed that the company had recently got approval from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) for a private placement of 8.1 crore share warrants to three Mauritius-based investment companies.

The ACL board earlier decided to mobilise Rs 188 crore for investing in oil exploration activities.

Chawdhry had earlier said that three foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were investing Rs 63 crore each in the company. These were Investment India (Mauritius), Lotus Global Investment and Mavi Investment Fund.

"We are issuing 2.7 crore warrant to each of the FIIs at Rs 23.25", he added.

The funds raised through this would be used mainly in oil exploration activities which required a lot of investments, he pointed out.

The company was also raising the FII limit from 24 per cent to 49 per cent to accommodate the private placement. Each FII would have a 8.8 per cent stake each in ACL after the placement over 18 months.