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B.K. Birla wants merger of timber, cement firms
Basant Kumar Birla, the patriarch of the Birla family, is keen to merge loss making Mangalam Timber Products with profit making Mangalam Cement in a restructuring within the group he controls.
Basant Kumar Birla, the patriarch of the Birla family, is keen to merge loss making Mangalam Timber Products with profit making Mangalam Cement in a restructuring within the group he controls.
Birla said that he was personally in favour of an amalgamation of the two.
“My grand daughter Vidula Jalan, who is running the two companies, wants to wait for some more time but I feel we should go ahead with the proposal,” Birla said after the annual general meeting of group flagship Kesoram Industries Ltd.
He also said to aid the merger he wants to raise his holding in the two firms to about 50 per cent in the medium term from the current 30 to 40 per cent.
Mangalam Timber, which makes fibre boards, suffered a loss of Rs 1.2 crore on a turnover of 67.56 crore in 2009-10, while Mangalam Cement earned a profit of Rs 118 crore on net sales of Rs. 614 crore.
On Kesoram, Birla said both his daughter Manjushree Khaitan and grandson Kumar Mangalam Birla were not willing to take over management control from him as yet.
