Haldia Energy and Spencer's stake sale on track

RPG Group flagship CESC Ltd has said that the stake sale plans for its two subsidiaries — Haldia Energy Ltd and Spencer’s — to part finance its expansion plans are on track and will finalise on its private equity (PE) deals shortly.

“For Haldia Energy, we are narrowing down the number of private equity firms to two or three. Since it is my first brush with PE firms, I underestimated the procedure. I expected the process to complete in three months, while it is expected to take atleast six months and will be finalised by July,” said Sanjiv Goenka, Vice Chairman, CESC.

The company will offload about 20 percent stake in Haldia Energy, which is a special utility vehicle. According to reports, the Kolkata-based company plans to invest about Rs 13,000 crore in the three projects — Haldia (600 MW), Orissa (1300 MW) and Maharashtra (600 MW) — housed by Haldia Energy and was looking to raise up to Rs 1,000 crore from private equity players for it.

Regarding Spencer’s stake sale, he said that the company is in talks with some private equity companies and will finalise the deal to sell 15 to 20 per cent stake soon. However, Goenka refused reveal the amount to be raised from the stake sale.

Meanwhile, on the development of thermal projects, he said, “For Haldia project, we got the principal investment approval from WBERC and zero date will be announced soon. While for Orissa one, we have made the land acquisition and are waiting for coal linkage and the zero date for Maharashtra project is on July 10.” The firm has also started work on its 90 MW hydro electric project in Arunachal Pradesh.