Who’s Money Matters? Well Morgan Stanley, Wellington, Fidelity, GMO invested in its QIP

Money Matters Financial Services Ltd, a listed non banking finance company (NBFC), that operates from Unit 1, Court Chambers, New Marine Lines, was promoted by Rajesh Sharma in 1995. Sharma has been arrested by CBI for taking bribe to sanction big loans to corporates.

The company is into loan syndication, debt placement, financial
restructuring and debt settlement.

It recently raised Rs445 crore through qualified institutional placement (QIP) in October this year to expand its asset financing business which includes short -term corporate funding,
structured product funding, margin funding and acquisition funding to corporates.

IIFL/India Infoline was the issue arranger and major investors were marquee global investors such as Morgan Stanley, Wellington, Fidelity and GMO.

The QIP was done at whopping Rs625.25 per share, which surprised the markets.

The company started coming into its own when in fiscal 2007, it bought over Dover Securities, a company listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, and subsequently reverse-merged it with itself.
The combined entity was renamed Money Matters Financial Services Ltd, and expanded business activities into investment banking, debt capital market services and asset-financing activities last fiscal.

Money Matters’ performance has been quite stunning in the last three years.

Sales in fiscal 2008 was just Rs7.80 crore. It jumped to Rs176.29 crore or by 2160% the following year. Last fiscal, Money Matters reported sales of Rs224.3 crore.

The net profit of the company has also zoomed from Rs4.27 crore in fiscal 2008 to Rs102.65 crore and in the subsequent year it rose to Rs125.57 crore.

The company’s clientele include Adani Group, Tata Group, Reliance ADA Group, Aditya Birla Group, Orbit Corporation, Indiabulls, Suzlon, HCC, Jaypee Group, Era Infra Engineering, Tulip Telecom, Cox & Kings.

The top four clients account for over 44% of its total syndication volume in the last fiscal, said  Srinivasan R, Sumeet Singh and Sampath Kumar, analysts with IIFL, in a note on the company on Monday

Money Matters formed two more wholly owned subsidiaries — Money Matters Research Pvt Ltd and Money Matters Resources Pvt Ltd, on January 22 and March 12, espectively, this year.
It also has four other subsidiaries.

The company syndicated Rs44,000 crores of loans during the last fiscal.

It recently syndicated a loan for DB Realty for close to Rs200 crore, which was sanctioned from LIC Housing Finance, with an interest cost of 13.5%.

The first disbursement for this loan was in March. Investigators are also looking at the loan draft.