Billionaire Birla Said to Delay Idea Share Sale: Corporate India

November 20, 2013 Leave a comment

Idea Said to Delay $482 Million Share Sale After Stock Declines

Idea Cellular Ltd. (IDEA), India’s second-largest listed mobile-phone operator, delayed plans to raise as much as 30 billion rupees ($482 million) in a stock sale after its shares fell, said two people with knowledge of the matter. The company, controlled by billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla, may start the sale to institutions next year after originally aiming to complete it this month, said the people. They asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. Idea shares dropped as much as 17 percent from an Oct. 15 all-time high before rebounding in the past week. The stock is still down 7.5 percent from last month’s 188.40 rupees peak, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Mumbai-based Idea had aimed to shell shares for least 190 rupees each, one person said. Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Axis Bank Ltd. are managing the share sale, the people said. Rajat Mukarji, a spokesman for Idea, declined to comment. Idea announced plans in August to raise money through a share sale to institutional investors. The company will also sell as much as 7.5 billion rupees of stock to an existing shareholder, Malaysia’s Axiata Group Bhd., according to a statement at the time.

To contact the reporter on this story: George Smith Alexander in Mumbai at galexander11@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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