Tata Sons lines up Rs 10,161 cr investment in group companies
25 Jul 2018
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Tata Sons, the holding company of the $144-billion Tata Group, has lined up investments to the tune of Rs10,161-crore across group companies, especially in the finance, insurance, defence, realty and retail segments.
These include investment of up to Rs1,800 crore in Tata Advance Systems, Rs1,750 crore in Tata Realty and Infrastructure, Rs 2,500 crore in Tata Capital, Rs260 crore in Tata AIG General Insurance, Rs250 crore in Infiniti Retail and Rs2,001crore in subsidiary holding company Panatone Finvest, the Economic times reported citing company documents.
Besides, the report said, the group had earmarked Rs1,600 crore investment for a possible acquisition of IDBI Federal Life Insurance.
Since N Chandrasekaran took over as group chairman after the exit of Cyrus Ministry last year, the group has been trimming non-profitable businesses to concentrate on high-growth companies.
Tata Sons is expecting a windfall from the Rs 16,000 crore buyback programme launched by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the group’s most profitable company. The cash may be used to steer core sectors forward. It made Rs 10,000 crore last year from the previous TCS buyback programme that was used to unwind the complicated crossholdings among Tata companies.
Chandrasekaran is looking at a turnaround of the Group by exiting loss-making units and ensuring capital flows to growing businesses.
He made two major deals soon after his appointment — selling the mobile telephony business to rival Bharti Airtel and forming a joint venture with ThyssenKrupp for Tata Steel’s European business.
Chandrasekaran has since regrouped its finance, aerospace, defence and infrastructure businesses, while leaving out large companies like Tata Steel, Tata Motors and TCS to fend for themselves.
Chandrasekharan is trying to reverse the groups focus on global markets to concentrate on domestic markets – the group currently makes about 60 per cent of its revenue overseas.
Going by Tata Sons’ recent moves, Chandrasekaran’s focus is on aggressively growing the diversified conglomerate as he continues to streamline the group, experts said.
The combined market capitalization of 29 listed companies of the Tata Group stood at $944,057 crore ($144.79 billion) as of end-March 2018.
Tata Group’s market cap had crossed the Rs100,000 crore ,mark with the listing of TCS on 25 August 2004. The group has the highest market capitalisation among all business houses in the country, both in public and private sector
With over 4 million investors, Tata group accounts for 6.6 per cent of the total market capitalisation on BSE.
