The Hindu : Business : Foreign funds invest in CSB

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Aug 07, 2007
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Business

Foreign funds invest in CSB

K. Venkiteswaran

The investors are from the U.S., U.K. and Hong Kong

KOCHI: Three Foreign Private Equity Funds have made strategic investments in the Thrissur-based Catholic Syrian Bank.

They are AIF Capital, headquartered in Hong Kong and established in 1994, one of the largest Asia-based private equity firms with over US$ 1 billion in investments pan Asia and in power, infrastructure and banking in India; Gartmore Ltd. headquartered in London — an independent asset manager with over 30 years of experience with over US$50 billion under management; and Siguler Guff headquartered in New York — an independent, multi-strategy private equity investment firm founded in 1995 with over US$ 4.50 billion under management

Highlights

The highlight of the investments is that the three reputed Foreign Private Equity Funds are from various quarters of the world and the investments were made at Rs 190/- including a premium of Rs 180/- per share. This constitutes 14 per cent of the existing equity of the Bank. With this investment totalling to Rs 33.30 crore, the net worth of the Bank will go up considerably, claims a press release.

Highlighting the importance of the capital infusion, Mr. V.P. Iswardas, Chief General Manager, said: “This is an important milestone for CSB. We welcome the participation from highly reputed global investment institutions such as AIF Capital, Gartmore and Siguler Guff. Access to additional capital as and when required would no longer be an issue for the CSB and we can now look forward to an era of high growth, adding simultaneously to shareholder value, over the next few years. Infused with significant amounts of fresh capital, CSB is well poised to grow aggressively, in all areas of banking.”

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