With Paras Pharma keen to sell, Emami ready to buy

Personal-care products maker Emami Ltd is looking to acquire Ahmedabad-based unlisted personal care firm Paras Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Emami group director Harsh Agarwal said today.

"We are interested in acquiring Paras Pharma. Negotiations on that front haven't started yet but as and when it comes to that we will start talking," he said, but refused to comment on the price. Earlier today, Mint newspaper had suggested a figure of Rs 4,000 crore, but Agarwal declined to confirm it.

The development follows a report on Wednesday by Bloomberg that Actis Capital LLP and Sequoia Capital plan to sell a controlling stake in Paras Pharmaceuticals for $700 million. The report didn't name its sources.

Actis, a private equity firm that invests in emerging markets, holds about 62 per cent of closely-held Paras, and Sequoia, one of Google Inc and Yahoo! Inc's early investors, owns about 8 per cent. Paras chairman Girish Patel and employees own the remaining stake.

Actis declines to comment on market speculation and rumors, Ravi Shyam, an external spokesman for the London-based private equity firm, said. Raja Ganapathy, a spokesman for Sequoia in Mumbai, Claire Brough, a spokeswoman for Glaxo in the UK, and Jean-Marc Podvin, a spokesman for Paris-based Sanofi-Aventis, declined to comment. Abbott India spokesman Koustubh Kanade didn't immediately respond to a Bloomberg e-mail seeking comment.

Actis, which has $4.8 billion in assets under management, began buying stakes in Paras in 2006, and currently has an investment of about $145 million in the company, according to a statement from the buyout firm.