It is not clear whether this amount would get them 20% or 30% of the share, due to complexity of the deal. Founder and Director of Sula Vineyards, Rajeev Samant was not available for comments despite several attempts made by delWine to contact him.
If the stakes are put at 20%, it would bring the valuation of Sula Vineyards to a whopping Rs. 2600 Million ($ 64 million). Of course 30% would bring the enterprise valuation to a more reasonable $ 40 million. Rajeev who currently owns majority shares of the privately held company had earlier spurned a bid by Diageo to buy major chunk of shares from him. If the report is correct, it will bring Rajeev and family into minority shareholding.
While denying the rumours exclusively to delWine, Rajeev had clearly said at that time that he might look for a strategic partner at a much later stage but would not like to lose the majority in the shareholding. The move would be contrary to his earlier stand.
However, the sale would be a win-win situation for both. Rajeev would get an exciting valuation for his remaining shares with a handsome bounty and Biyani would get a foothold into a quality wine producing company with a bright future. With the opening of wine marketing for the supermarkets, Future Group will have a big stake in the booming wine industry. Sula produced 129, 000 cases last year and is looking for a whopping 50% growth this year. It is considered the leading producer of better quality wines in India.
Big guns like Diageo, UB, Seagram and Dabur are rattling up the existing companies which are forming alliances and re-alliances. Earlier this year Kapil Grover offloaded more than 26% of his shares reportedly at Rs.110-135 a share to Brindco, in order to form the strategic marketing alliance. Reliance had bought 10% of shares in the enigmatic Chateau Indage, the biggest and the only public listed company.
Future Capital Holdings, Biyani's Financial Services arm is planning to go in for an IPO in the near future for about Rs. 50 billion ($ 1.2 billion) worth of shares according to a report in Hindustan Times.
The board of directors of Pantaloon Retail, which controls nearly 74% stake in Future Capital, took a decision to this effect on August 20.
In addition to Pantaloon, Och-Ziff Capital, the hedge fund with USD 27 billion corpus, holds nearly 10% stake. The remaining stake is being held by co-promoter Sameer Sain and other senior employees such as Atul Kapur and Shishir Baijal.
Subhash Arora |
