Maytas was pushed into the limelight after its founders ended up in the dock for cooking up India' biggest fraud at sister firm Satyam.
The race to acquire Maytas Infra is heating up and is likely to be as closely watched as the race for Satyam.
Big infrastructure companies have jumped onto the bandwagon, and are all vying for a piece of the Maytas Infra pie.
The companies in the race include Reliance Infra, GVK, GMR and the Nepal based conglomerate Chaudhary Group, which has also initiated talks with IL&FS, the single largest stakeholder in Maytas.
The bidders haven't been deterred by either the fact that Maytas shares its founders with Satyam who masterminded India's biggest corporate scam.
Nor has the loss of Rs 12,500 crore Hyderabad metro rail project, derailed their quest.
So, the question is how does it benefit the bidders, given that Maytas' order book size is already down to Rs 7500 crore, only a third of what it was before the fraud broke out and it’s now mostly managed by the government.
However, the big challenge for any potential bidder will be to ensure they are able to keep the remaining projects and indeed the key employees, both of which have been under pressure since the Satyam scam broke in January and put Maytas into the spotlight as well.
Well, it will have to break past the government bureaucracy to seal the deal.
The investment firm
picked up 22,22,500 shares of Maytas Infra, amounting to 3.78% of the total paid up capital on Thursday for a consideration of a little over Rs 17 crore. CLSA had lapped up 18,12,581 shares or 3.08% stake in the company sometime between July 1 and 22, 2009.As of June 30, 2009, with a 1.62% stake holding, Citigroup Global Markets Mauritius Pvt Ltd was the only foreign institutional investor holding over 1% equity in Maytas Infra. In fact, Citigroup Global Markets upped its equity holding from 1.59% in the January-March 2009 quarter to 1.62%. Incidentally, the total FII holding in the company for the April-June 2009 quarter stood at just 3.43%, up from the total FII holding of 2.55% in the Jan-March 2009 quarter.
Incidentally, IFCI Ltd has halved its equity holding in Maytas Infra from 17.42% in the January-March 2009 quarter to 8.44% (in the April-June 2009 quarter. However, IL & FS Financial Services
Ltd continues to hold a 14.5% stake in the company.As of June 30, 2009, other investors with stakeholding in Maytas Infra include Sicom Ltd with a 5.27% equity and HDFC Growth Fund with 1.29% stake.