ICICI Bank Ltd., India's second biggest lender, is set to raise $3 billion for two funds in an effort to compete with Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank AG in India, reports Bloomberg News.
ICICI Venture Fund Management Ltd. will tap investors for a $1.5 billion private equity fund starting next week, and may raise an equal amount for a real-estate fund, Chief Executive Officer Renuka Ramnath said in an interview in Mumbai. The division currently manages about $2.5 billion in assets.
ICICI joins Blackstone Group LP and local rivals including Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. in seeking investment opportunities in India, where private equity funds invested seven times as much
as in China in the first quarter. India's economy has grown an average 8.7% annually since 2003.
Private equity funds invested $4 billion in Indian companies through the quarter ended March, 67% more than a year earlier, New Delhi-based advisory firm IndusView Advisors Pvt. said last month. That compared with the 76% drop to $570 million for China, the firm said. s
The record economic growth and a shortage of homes that led to a four-year rally in property prices helped attract Warburg Pincus LLC and Blackstone, which have bought stakes in Indian real-estate developers in recent months. The world's second-most populous nation will face a deficit of 26.5 million houses by 2012, the government estimates.
Deutsche Bank's RREEF Unit, the world's largest alternative investment manager, plans to invest more than $1 billion over three years in India's real estate and infrastructure assets.
ICICI's proposed $1.1 billion real estate fund, which may be expanded to $1.5 billion, will invest in residential and commercial projects in a dozen cities including
the capital, New Delhi, and the commercial hub of Mumbai, Ramnath said. Most of the funds will be raised from investors in the U.S., Europe, Japan, Canada and the Middle East, she said.
