Bennett Coleman and Company Ltd (BCCL) may be the most profitable media company in India but the company’s balance sheet reveals a lot more than the P&L.
It, for instance, formally got into insurance in 2007-08 (FY08) by picking up a 30 per cent stake in Aegon Religare Life Insurance for Rs 400 crore.
BCCL’s investments in a lot of listed as well as unlisted companies are interesting. Some of the prominent listed ones include ICICI Bank, Videocon, Pantaloon, GMR, GTL Infra and Fortis Healthcare. Many investments are private “treaties” or agreements with companies that are believed to have sold stake to BCCL in return for advertising space, for one, in The Times of India and The Economic Times.
| A CORPORATE TREATISE | ||
| BCCL investments |
Book value | |
investments
(In Rs cr)
In FY08, BCCL seems to have entered into various new private treaties with unlisted companies, covering almost every sector from pharma to real estate to retail to infrastructure and even brokerage.
The market value of all the investments in listed companies is Rs 2,200 crore at the end of FY08, as against a book value of Rs 1,100 crore. The book value of Bennett Coleman’s investments in unlisted companies stands at Rs 2,646 crore, which includes investments in subsidiary companies.
BCCL demerged TV channel Zoom into a separate company, Zoom Entertainment Network, and got Merrill Lynch to invest Rs 120 crore for a 25 per cent equity in the demerged entity, thereby valuing Zoom at Rs 480 crore.
The Times Group’s foray into the television arena is yet to yield much dividend. Its subsidiary, Times Global Broadcasting, posted a loss of over Rs 50 crore in FY08, taking its total accumulated losses so far to Rs 150 crore.
