The Hindu Business Line : IDFC picks up 22% in Seaways Shipping

Chennai, June 10 IDFC PE-II, a venture fund of Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation, has picked up 22 per cent stake in the Seaways Shipping Ltd, for Rs 120 crore. According to people in the know, the funds are to be used for buying more container ships.

The Rs 600-crore Seaways Shipping is based in Hyderabad and is one the leading maritime operators in the country, providing a range of shipping and logistics services. Its services (some provided through its subsidiaries) include stevedoring, clearing and forwarding, container handling, freight forwarding, customs and vessel agency, chartering and broking and vessel and port management. It also provides air logistics services.

It also has a joint venture with Rhenus AG an €2.3 billion German logistics company. The joint venture, Seaways Rhenus Logistics Ltd offers warehousing and distribution services in Europe.

That IDFC (and J P Morgan) had been in discussion for funding Seaways for some time. But the deal was finalised only about a week ago, sources said.

The investment was made out of IDFC’s second fund, which has a corpus of $440 million. (The first fund had a corpus of $190 million, out of which 11 investments were made.)

Most of the second fund has been invested—in fact, Seaways is the second investment out of the fund in the current financial year. In April, IDFC invested Rs 40 crore in Emergent India Ventures Pvt Ltd, a carbon credit advisory firm.

IDFC is now looking to raise a third fund, with a corpus of around $700 million.

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