PE deals move up significantly in Sept quarter

Thanks to the $1 bn investment by Bain Capital in the BPO firm Genpact, investment amount showed a growth of 4.4%

Private equity firms invested about $2.5 billion across 97 deals during the quarter ended September 2012, according to a study by Venture Intelligence, a research agency that tracks M&A activity in India. Thanks to the $1 billion investment by Bain Capital in US listed, Gurgaon based BPO firm Genpact, the investment amount showed a growth of 4.4% over that invested in the same period last year ($2.4 billion across 120 transactions) and a healthy 32% over the immediate previous quarter (which had witnessed $1.9 billion being invested across 105 transactions). Despite the quarterly up tick, the total PE investments in the first nine months of 2012 at $6.54 billion across 309 transactions, significantly trails the $8.9 billion across 357 transactions in the same period in 2011.

Bain Capital Partners’ purchase of shares held by previous PE investors - General Atlantic and Oak Hill Capital - in NYSE-listed, Gurgoan-based BPO firm Genpact for approximately $1 billion was the largest PE investment during the September 2012 quarter by a huge margin, with no other investment crossing the $200 million figure. The second largest investment during the period was SBI-Macquarie’s $150 million investment in Ashoka Concessions Limited, a road-construction subsidiary of publicly-listed Ashoka Buildcon.

Led by the Genpact deal, IT & ITES companies attracted $1.3 billion (51% of the value pie) across 45 reported investments during the September quarter. In other IT & ITES transactions, Blackstone acquired a 6.1% stake in publicly listed Financial Technologies India through open market transactions; Actis invested $40 million in ATM outsourcing and payments company AGS Transact Technologies and Carlyle picked up shares worth $39 million in publicly listed Infotech Enterprises.