IL&FS Investment Managers (IIML) is set to achieve a soft close of its proposed billion-dollar infrastructure fund within the next six months, even as it is looking to achieve the target corpus within a year.
IL&FS Financial Services MD & CEO Ramesh C Bawa said, “The soft close should be in another four-six months from now, depending on market conditions. This means 25-30% of the funds would have been raised by then. We started about nine months ago and usually it takes about 18-24 months to raise a fund of this size.” He added that the fund would invest in operational assets primarily in the roads and renewable energy sectors, as well as in waste management.
IIML’s website lists eight funds that are currently active with a total corpus size of about $3 billion. Of this, four are real estate-focused funds, ILFS India Realty Fund I and ILFS India Realty Fund II, with corpuses of $525 million and $895 million, respectively. The Saffron India Real Estate Fund I is a smaller fund of $103.5 million, while Yatra Capital is a $272 million fund. The Leverage India fund and Tara India Fund III are sector-agnostic funds, with a size of $153 million and $225 million, respectively. The firm also has two existing infrastructure funds, the Pan Asia Project Development Fund ($45 million) and
Standard Chartered IL&FS Asia Infrastructure Growth Fund ($658 million).Bawa also said the group has abandoned plans for its proposed infrastructure investment trust (InvIT). Group company IL&FS Transportation Networks (ITNL) had earlier proposed to raise about Rs 3,500-4000 crore through an InvIT. The company said in its Q3FY17 earnings conference call that the InvIT could help the company reduce its debt by around Rs 4,000 crore on a consolidated basis. However, Bawa said, “Investors are still waiting and watching to see the performance of the two InvITs that have already been listed. If there is enough appetite among investors in future, we may take a look again at this option. However, at the moment, we are able to raise funds for our needs at very competitive rates in the international market. In FY19, we would be raising between `12,000-15,000 crore from both the domestic and international markets through a combination of bank loans and masala bonds.”
IIML is one of the oldest and largest private equity fund managers in India, with over $3 billion in assets under management. It was also the first fund manager to establish an infrastructure focused PE fund soon after it began operations in 1996.
Source: financialexpress
