India Eases Overseas Investment Norms -
The Beginning of a New Era in Offshore
M&A
Earlier this week, India liberalized its overseas investment regime, in what seems to be the first confident step in its ‘Go-Global’ strategy. Indian companies are now freely permitted to flip their structures and access global capital, effectively allowing Indian founders to realize the best valuations anywhere around the world without the fear of ‘round-tripping’. In addition, Indian corporates with inorganic growth strategies have been given a completely new avenue of acquisition financing – i.e. financing from ‘private credit’ players at the offshore subsidiary level with the Indian entity as the security provider. On the fund front, Indian GPs can invest into and pool funds in GIFT City from domestic and international LPs to invest in Indian/ offshore targets.
Some new challenges have however emerged. Indian founders cannot directly hold >10% in flipped structures. Round-tripping norms get triggered if there are more than 2 layers of subsidiaries, in-turn compromising operational flexibility for Indian companies. What are the workarounds ? How is the regulatory mindset evolving despite the relaxations? Will there be a spurt in offshore PE and M&A activity? Join us at the upcoming webinar where we discuss these with an exceptional panel of bankers, investor, founder and advisors.