Private equity firms Norwest Venture Partners and ICICI Ventures have made partial exits by selling a combined 1.49 per cent stake in Chennai-based Shriram City Union Finance, the retail finance arm of Rs 60,000 crore Shriram Group. The transactions were estimated to be around Rs 95 crore.
According to BSE’s bulk deal data Norwest Venture Partners X FII — Mauritius sold 394,009 shares at a price of Rs 1,230 a share. The sale was for over Rs 48.46 crore.
The venture capital and growth equity fund as on December 31, 2012 held 1,342,179 shares, constituting 8.26 per cent of SCUF’s total number of shares. Industry sources said, the fund sold around 10-15 per cent of its total shareholding, which is presently estimated to be around Rs 300 crore. It may be noted, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), which manages around $3.7 billion, invested around Rs 120 crore in the BSE-listed Shriram City Union through a secondary market block purchase of shares in 2009.
Norwest Venture Partners partial exit in Shriram City is at nearly 4x, said industry sources. Similarly, India Advantage Fund VI (ICICI Venture) sold 370,000 shares worth Rs 45.54 crore, according to National Stock Exchange data. It may be noted, ICICI Venture started exiting from SCUF from September 2012.
Major buyer of the stocks was Hong Kong based hedge fund Steadview Capital Mauritius which bought 398,000 shares on the NSE and 412,000 shares on the BSE at a price of Rs 1,227.76 a share and Rs 1229.21 a share respectively.
ChrysCapital and ICICI Venture together sold around 5.6 per cent stake in the company with over 4X.
Chrys Capital through its investment arm, Van Gogh Limited offloaded 2,289,908 shares for Rs 750 per share aggregating Rs 171.74 crore. In 2006 Chrys Capital picked up a 10 per cent stake or 4 million shares for Rs 160 a share in SCUF and later increased its stake through open market purchases and warrant conversion.
ICICI Venture through its arm India Advantage Fund Offloaded 666,666 shares for Rs 750 per share aggregating to Rs 49.99 crore, through bulk deals on NSE and BSE in 2012.
SCUF was incorporated in 1986 under the name of Shriram Hire Purchase Finance Ltd, went public in 1994 and is registered as a Deposit Accepting NBFC with the RBI. SCUF’s Assets Under Management is in the tune of around Rs 15,000 crore.
