The Hindu Business Line : Gates Foundation picks stake in Trent

Mumbai, July 10 The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has acquired 98,790 shares of Trent Ltd for Rs 4.47 crore (about $1 million). The wealthiest charitable foundation in the world, bought the shares through Morgan Stanley’s FII unit. In the past, the foundation has bought 3.42 lakh shares of Geometric Software, the only other Indian company, for Rs 2.46 crore.

The Foundation, which has a corpus of $38 billion, is managed by Bill Gates Investment and is owned by the Microsoft founder. It has to invest at least 5 per cent of the monies in charitable activities every year.

While the Tatas did not want to comment on the deal, industry analysts described it as being ‘absolutely minimal’ in nature.

“It all depends on the kind of work the foundation has been doing and the amount of funds it would need in the future. It is possibly looking at a pure investment opportunity. Besides, the fact that the Tatas own Trent may also have helped in sealing the deal towards their favour,” stated an analyst.

The shares of Trent Ltd rose 1.4 per cent to close at Rs 470 at the Bombay Stock Exchange on Thursday.

At the end of March 2008, promoters’ holding in the company stood at 32.16 per cent while mutual funds including UTI holding 22.88 per cent. Thirty five foreign institutional investors hold 8.6 per cent in the company while public holding stood at 28.77 per cent at the end of March. Institutions such as Franklin India Smaller Fund, Swiss Finance Corporation, Templeton Mutual Fund, Sundaram BNP Paribas, Reliance Mutual Fund and HDFC MF are having exposure in the company.

Trent has posted revenues of Rs 716 crore and a net profit of Rs 33.64 crore on a consolidated basis for the year ended March 31, 2008. It had clocked a turnover of Rs 631.86 crore and a net profit of Rs 33.20 crore in 2006-07.

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