Spice eyes MF, insurance biz

Spice Finance will soon acquire companies in mutual fund and broking space — it has shortlisted three companies in each of the two business areas and has earmarked a total of Rs 300 crore for the two acquisitions, reports Sandeep Singh.

Spice Finance will soon acquire companies in mutual fund and broking space — it has shortlisted three companies in each of the two business areas and has earmarked a total of Rs 300 crore for the two acquisitions.

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“We will now go ahead with the due diligence for acquisitions in the two businesses,” said Sudip Bandyopadhyay, who recently moved from Reliance ADAG to Spice group as group president (global financial services). “We expect to close the deal within two months and want to be up and running by end of March 2010.”

The group is looking at mid-sized players in the two business segments. If the L&T purchase of DBS Cholamandalam’s asset management business is taken as a valuation benchmark, Rs 150 crore would be able to buy a mutual fund with assets under management worth up to Rs 9,300 crore.

The BK Modi-promoted Spice group has interests in telecom and entertainment, and plans to expand into financial services. In addition to mutual funds and insurance, it also plans to get into the microfinance business.

“For microfinance, we are working on a greenfield project and are targeting a book size in excess of Rs 100 crore by the end of the financial year 2010-11,” said Bandyopadhyay.

Spice group as of now has presence in the financial services space through Wall Street Finance, which is primarily into the business of foreign exchange and money remittance.