Mallya: Midas touch

Mumbai, May 31: Look who’s stalking!

After the Tatas, Vijay Mallya has turned into a feared predator looking to grab distressed corporate assets in India and abroad.

After poaching french winemaker Bouvet-Ladubay and scotch whisky maker Whyte & Mackay, Mallya has now bought into Air Deccan even though he has ceded management control to founder G.R. Gopinath for now.

Mallya has splashed out over Rs 5,400 crore on these three acquisitions. Financial circles within the UB group point out that while sewing up these acquisitions, the focus has been on not creating huge debts on the balancesheet of the acquiring companies even as other options are also being examined.

“They have come from instruments like GDR issue, internal accruals. But the group is looking at other instruments so as to not increase the debt component significantly,” sources said.

Citing the case of the acquisition of 26 per cent in Air Deccan, the official said while Rs 150 crore would be paid upfront, the remaining amount of Rs 400 crore would have to be stumped up by the end of June.

Kingfisher Radio, a subsidiary of group company United Breweries Holdings Ltd, will acquire up to 9,677,419 equity shares of Deccan Aviation as an initial investment.

The source did not rule out the possibility of the UB group bringing in other co-investors (largely financial) in the Air Deccan transaction. However, he pointed out that developments here are preliminary at this stage.

In the case of Bouvet-Ladubay, the acquisition, which was little over Rs 80 crore was made by a Mauritius-based wholly owned subsidiary called Asian Opportunities and Investments and it was funded from proceeds of the GDR issue and through internal accruals.

Similarly, after the acquisition of Whyte & Mackay, Mallya had said United Spirits Ltd would tap into its treasury stock in addition to the debt that other group companies would raise to fund the acquisition.