India: Birla Corp reportedly front-runner for Reliance assets

Birla Corp Ltd is set to buy the cement assets of Reliance Infrastructure Ltd with the deal set to be sealed within the next few days, according to local media reports.

“It will be signed formally in the coming days,” said one of the two people cited above. “Even though discussions took nearly a month’s time to finalise, other contenders weren’t really considered for the sale,” LiveMint reported sources familiar with the matter as saying.

Birla Corp’s bid for Reliance Cement Co Pvt Ltd’s assets comes just a few months after it agreed to buy 5.15Mta of capacity from Lafarge in eastern India. That deal is still to be concluded because of policy uncertainty over the transfer of mining licences attached to the cement units.

Others who had submitted binding bids for Reliance Cement are JSW Cement Ltd and private equity giant Blackstone Group LP. Binding bids were submitted in the last week of December. Another person involved in the deal said that Birla Corp had bid the highest, followed by Blackstone and JSW Cement.