EY burnishes its credentials with successful Air India sale to Tatas

With the Air India deal closed, the team at EY is gearing up for more government asset sale programmes

In 2017, when the government had initiated the process of selling Air India and its subsidiaries, it decided to appoint two transaction advisors. The task was humongous and it didn’t think one advisor could pull it off. But an issue broke out. British multinational bank Rothschild & Co, one of the two believed to get the mandate, decided against the fee of 0.2 per cent of total transaction value, citing it as “too low for such a complex process”.

According to guidelines of the bidding process, the fee quoted by EY - the highest in the preferred bidder list - was