| Making its debut in India, the US-based private equity firm Advent International has invested $90 million in Chennai-based mutual fund registrar Computer Age Management Services (Cams). |
| Advent picked up a minority stake in the company from Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC). |
| Sources said the buyout and growth equity fund, which made the investment out of its $12 billion global capital pool, acquired the shares in the unlisted Indian registrar through a combination of primary (new share issuance) and secondary (stake held by HDFC) shares. |
| Cams, a leading registrar and transfer agent for mutual funds industry, presently enjoys a 60 per cent market share in the mutual fund market. |
| The private equity deal was a hotly contested asset with top PE funds in the country bidding for the stake, said sources close to the development. The deal is likely to be sealed in the coming days, they said. |
| V Shankar, managing director of Cams, could not be reached for comments as he is out of the country. The HDFC group currently holds 49 per cent stake and the rest is held by the promoter (V Shankar) of the company. According to market sources, HDFC will eventually exit from the company. |
| However, currently they will be just a financial investor in Cams. The sources said the reason Advent International bagged the deal was because it understands the financial services space very well and earlier had an investment in one of the portfolio companies in Europe which had similar strengths like Cams. This is Advent's first investment in India. |
| CAMS and Karvy Computershare are the major players in the registrar and transfer business. Sensing a big opportunity in the Rs 5,00,000 crore assets under management of the mutual fund industry, new players including Deutsche, BNP Paribas and Citigroup are entering the business in India. |
| Advent International has been active in the Asian market for over 20 years. The PE is also actively building a direct investment capability in India. The sectors it mainly focuses on are financial services, retail& consumer, healthcare & life sciences and industrial. |
| As far as HDFC is concerned, sources said the Indian housing lender partially monetised its stake in the company through the deal. Cams would be utilising the funds for expanding its processing business both in India and aboard. |
| Recently HDFC had exited Intelenet Global Services, a business process outsourcing (BPO) firm by selling their stake to private equity giant Blackstone. Intelenet was a 50:50 joint venture established in 2004 by Barclays and HDFC. |
| This year the financial services space was the most active sector which saw deals worth $ 2,418 million out of the total $3,105 million, according to Thomson Financial. |
Source: Business Standard