Essar Group is exiting BPO business with the sale of Aegis or AGC Holdings Limited to Singapore-based Capital Square Partners.
In a statement from Essar Group, the transaction value was not disclosed, but PTI reported it to be in the range of US $ 275-300 million.
The proceeds from the sale, is likely to be utilised to reduce the group's debt. In last October, the group had announced a US $ 12.9-billion deal with a consortium led by Russia's Rosneft to sell a stake in Essar Oil. Additionally, Essar Power and Essar Steel too have been looking at stake sales.
Uday Gujadhur, director, AGC Holdings, said, "This transaction is in line with our strategy of incubating, building and operating world-class businesses, and being open to monetizing them at a premium value when the market conditions are favourable."
"Aegis has revenues of US $ 400 million and 40,000 employees across 47 centres in 10 countries," read the group's statement on the deal. The 10 countries being India, United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Australia, South Africa, Peru, Argentina, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom. The clients being from the telecommunications, technology, media, banking, financial services & insurance, travel & logistics, retail and eCommerce industries.
This transaction from Essar to the Singapore-based private-equity fund manager is likely to close during the first quarter of FY17-18.
Back in 2004, Essar had entered the BPO business after having acquired US-based Aegis Communications Group, with 2,000 employees. In 2014, AGC had announced successful sale of Aegis USA Inc (comprising Aegis' operations in the USA, the Philippines and Costa Rica) to Teleperformance for a consideration of US $ 610 million, it had almost 60,000 people. Thereafter, the Aegis headcount and revenues were substantially reduced.
Since then, Aegis has again grown the business in terms of headcount, revenues, product offerings and the combined proceeds of the sale of stake at different points of time is expected to be US $1 billion.
Essar's advisors in the transaction include Axis Capital as financial advisor, and Platinum Partners and Sidley Austin as legal advisors. Shearman & Sterling and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas acted as legal advisors to Capital Square Partners.
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