L&T eyes infrastructure assets listing in India

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Industrial conglomerate Larsen and Toubro Ltd is exploring a listing of its infrastructure assets including toll roads in the local market via a newly created investment trust, its chief financial officer told Reuters.

Mumbai-based Larsen initially wants to list assets valued in the "low" hundreds of millions of dollars, R. Shankar Raman said, after deciding against an earlier plan to list the assets in Singapore.

"If we can list these assets without the foreign exchange risk, then obviously we would prefer to do it," he said, adding the company needed clarity on some tax issues before moving ahead with it.

 

India cleared the way for the country's first infrastructure trusts as well as so-called real estate investment trusts in July by announcing tax benefits, allowing developers to monetize their assets through a stock exchange listing. [ID:nL4N0QG0AO]

Larsen had tapped investors earlier this year for a listing of its infrastructure assets in Singapore - in a deal sources familiar with the matter said could have raised up to $800 million - but did not move ahead with the plan.

(Reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee)