Syntans Picks Karur, Karnataka Bank Stakes

The Chennai-based Indian Syntans Investments and associates, who hold major stakes in Aventis CropScience India and Bayer India, have picked up 2.5 per cent stake each in two private sector banks, Karur Vysya Bank and Karnataka Bank, through market purchases.

N Narayanan, chairman of Indian Syntans, said: "These two banks are doing well and our stake in them has recently touched 2.5 per cent. Since several leading private banks are takeover targets for a number of foreign banks, we are keen on making large scale investments in some banks."

In addition to these banks and other organisations, Indian Syntans has 4.5 per cent stake in Aventis India and recently it almost doubled its holding in Bayer India from 5.6 per cent to 11.4 per cent. However, Narayanan declined to comment on the total investment made by the group for acquiring the substantial holding.

"We are not keen on running these companies. Our main aim is to make returns on our investments. We are a 20-25 member professional company analysing chances of making investments. We have also exited some of the companies we invested earlier at the right time," he added.

Narayanan and associates have been making investments in the past 20-30 years in ethically-promoted companies. Before becoming an investor, Narayanan was a manufacturer of chemicals, and had a leather tanning business in Tamil Nadu.

According to Narayanan, his company does not want to become a predator, but will ask companies to maintain transparency in all their transactions. For instance, the company has said it will initiate legal action against Bayer India for undervaluation and selling its pharma sales and marketing division to Bayer Pharmaceuticals. Bayer Pharmaceuticals is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bayer AG.

It alleges the pharma marketing division was not properly valued and similar deals such as ICI and Abbot were valued at 1-1.5 times the revenue. The company feels that the value should be around Rs 60-70 crore, as against Rs 7 crore Bayer India received from Bayer Pharmaceuticals.