INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Automotive Technologies to create a Rs 4,200-crore auto components platform, said three people aware of ongoing discussions.
Blackstone will
own 62 per cent of the merged company
Kapur will own the rest and will be the chairman
A formal announcement is due by this month end
The professional management of the two firms will stay.
The merger will also pave the exit for JM Financial, which owns 32 per cent in the
Sona Group company, which has been valued at Rs 2,100 crore ($300 million)
The Chennai-based company was founded in 1999 as a local subsidiary of Visteon Corp, a unit of Ford Motor Co.
Blackstone and Kapur declined
to comment.
Comstar has an installed capacity of close to 4 million starter motors and a little over 1 million alternators in India besides
800,000 starter motors in North America
Its clients include Ford, Volvo, Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland-Nissan, Renault Nissan, Geely, Jaguar, Aston Martin and Mazda, according to its
website.
Sona BLW Precision Forging is a leading manufacturer of precisionforged parts with plants in Pune and Gurugram with around 85 per
It also has three plants in Germany and one in Hungary
With over 100 RD engineers and 12 active patents, it caters to clients such as Audi, Daimler, Maruti Suzuki, Scania, Ford, Tata Motors,
Mahindra and Mahindra and Tafe among others.
The combined company will have $60 million of Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes,
one of the persons cited above
It is extremely difficult to organically scale up in this space since there are a number of smaller players
Holding and successfully took it public in 2004 following a $4.7 billion buyout in 2003
In India, it made an almost fourfold return on its investment in tractor-maker International Tractors by selling its 17.75 per cent stake to
to set up a manufacturing unit in India, Sona Okegawa Precision Forgings, to produce warm forged bevel gears and synchronizer rings
In the early 2000s, Sona Group embarked on a plan to be the largest producer of automotive bevel gears in the country
In 2008, it acquired the forging division of Thyssenkrupp, which had bought BLW, the inventor of warm forge technology
Sona Okegawa Precision Forging became the largest manufacturer of forged gears.
