Blackstone Group to invest $2 Billion in India
By siliconindia   |   Monday, 27 September 2010, 21:44 IST   |    1 Comments
Printer Print Email Email
Blackstone Group to invest $2 Billion in India
Mumbai: Blackstone Group is in plans to invest in India over the next three years. As of now, the New York based private equity company has already invested $1.2 billion since it commenced its operations in India nearly five years ago, reports Vinod Mahanta of the Economic Times. "I think we certainly could invest another $1-2 billion in India in the next three years and we have the ability to invest more if the opportunity presents itself. We were very bullish on India," said Stephen Schwarzman, Co-founder and Chairman of Blackstone. The company seems to be more interested to go for investments in India and it has invested in 12 companies, some of them being Gokaldas Exports and Intelenet Global Services. Blackstone usually uses pools of investor money backed with debt to acquire companies and sell them later to realize profits. But such a strategy did not help them to resist the global economic downturn in 2008 which affected many organizations after the collapse of Lehmann Brothers. But the scene is slightly better now as the deal flows have been increasing and several private equity funds are willing to invest. "Private equity has done, for the good managers, much better. The number of bankruptcies in private equity was surprisingly few, certainly compared to what journalists and analysts were projecting during the crisis," adds Schwarzman. Schwarzman feels that the combination of flexible covenants on past loans and low borrowing costs helped in the refinancing of old loans and that had helped the sector. From a solvency point of view, the Private equity investments are in a good shape but the loss in the reputation of the financial sector has called for strict regulation.

siliconindia