In a major thrust to its investments in the domestic infrastructure sector, the Calcutta-based over Rs 5000 crore RPG group is setting up a new holding company under which it will consolidate all the various group companies, both existing and proposed, that operate in the different infrastructure sectors.
The proposed company - RPG Infrastructure Investments Ltd - will be the vehicle through which the Goenka-family will route its investments into its various companies in the sectors of power, telecom, ports, roads and other infrastructural areas.
The company has already submitted an application seeking government approval to bring in foreign direct investment in the proposed holding company through an equity offering abroad.
Sources said that the RPG group has proposed to retain a majority of at least 51 per cent in the holding company.
Sources also disclosed that for the proposed equity offering to foreign investors in the holding company RPG is looking to attract primarily passive investors, including financial institutions, even while each operating company under its fold will continue to enter into technical-cum-equity alliances wherever necessary in order to access international technology and expertise.
The group, which has already set up smaller holding companies for each specific sector like RPG Power for all power companies, and RPG Telecom for telecom ventures, is looking to form a layered structure under which the proposed RPG Infrastructure Investments will hold controlling equity in each sector-specific holding company which in turn will hold equity in each individual company.
Company sources also confirmed that in order to bring existing companies under the proposed holding company, all the equity investments already made by RPG group into various group companies is to first revert back to the respective investing companies.
Thereafter this investment would be rerouted again through the holding companys which would acquire an equity stake in each of them.
The group companies wherein the RPG group equity share will be through the proposed holding company include the power companies RPG Dholpur, RPG Haryana, RPG Kazargode.
RPG Dholpur is the largest power project of the group, which is setting up a 750 MW liquid fuel based plant in Dholpur.
The RPG group has also bid for some road projects in the country and is eyeing the port sector, all of which will be under the proposed new holding company.
The telecom companies which fall in this fold are RPG Cellular (cellular licensees for Madhya Pradesh and Chennai), RPG Basic Telephony (holds the basic services license for Tamil Nadu), RPG Paging (for paging services), RPG Ricoh (which sells office equipment like faxes and phones) and RPG Sprint (which is in the field of e-mail and other data network service providers).
