BHW Holding may up Birla Home pie to 74%

BHW Holding ACG of Germany is expected to raise its holding in Birla Home Finance Ltd (BHFL) to 74 per cent soon. BHW had recently hiked its holding in BHFL to 60 per cent from 50 per cent.

Following this, Ralph Harake, has taken charge as the managing director of BHFL in place of Subrata Dutta Gupta, who has left the organisation. More changes are expected to take place in the company's top management shortly.

"With the uptrend in the Indian home loan market in the last two years, BHW Holding has recently hiked its stake in the company by 10 per cent. We expect this to go up to 74 per cent. The remaining 26 per cent will be held by the K K Birla Group's Chambal Fertilisers. We will soon announce this formally after Harake resumes duty in Delhi on January 5. This change will definitely boost the company's equity base in the near future," a senior BHFL official told Business Standard.

The official also said that the company, which was slated to raise Rs 100 crore through non-convertible debentures during mid-2003, has delayed the process. Also, after the changes in the holding pattern of BHFL, the company may raise Rs 50-100 crore in the first quarter of next fiscal.

"It all now depends on whether BHW Holding raises its stake in BHFL by 74 per cent," the official said.

BHFL, during September 2002, had announced its plans to raise Rs 100 crore through non-convertible debentures.

According to the official, the company has no plan to hand over stake in the company to the Washington-based International Finance Corporation (IFC) from which BHFL had raised a Rs 96 crore loan in the first quarter of last fiscal.

The official said, "There were talks around that time about IFC picking up a stake in BHFL. But so far it is being treated as a term loan from IFC and there is no concrete plan to hand over a stake to IFC."

BHFL, which witnessed good response to its 'Easy Home Loan' product, is also planning to launch two products for workers in the unorganised sector.

The company is also working on new products which will be inspired by globally successful models of BHW Holding. The official denied to divulge details about these products.

BHFL had disbursed around Rs 340 crore of home loans in last fiscal. The company also hopes to disburse around Rs 440 crore by the end of the current fiscal.