HPL buys L&T stake in power joint venture

Haldia Petrochemicals (HPL) today announced that it has acquired Larsen & Toubro's 51per cent stake in HPL Cogeneration (HPLCL), the joint venture for captive power supply with HPL, for an estimated Rs 180 crore.

The buy-out came at a time when the company was operating in adverse circumstances with the bottomline under great pressure. The 10-year joint venture produced 116 mw for HPL's operations. According to the initial agreement, HPL could buy out L&T's stake in 2020 at a suitable price. However, both parties decided to go ahead with a buy-out now.

Read more in The Business Standard article.

Tata Power to refinance Indonesian acquisitions

Tata Power Company (TPC) on Tuesday announced refinancing of loans worth $850 million taken for funding its acquisition of 30% stake in Indonesian thermal coal producers, PT Kaltim Prima Coal and PT Arutmin Indonesia, as well as trading companies from PT Bumi Resources. It had taken $950-million one-year bridge loan to finance the $1.1-billion purchase.

The refinancing consists of a $580-million non-recourse loan and a $270-million recourse loan. The non-recourse facility has a door-to-door tenure of six years while the tenure of the recourse loan is one year more.

The financing has been provided by a group of banks led by five mandated lead arrangers including Barclays Capital, Bank of India, ICICI Bank, State Bank of India and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation. TPC will evaluate the option of refinancing the remaining $100 million of the bridge loan at an appropriate time.

Read more in The Economic Times article.

Tata Power ties up debt for $4.2 bln project

Indian power utility Tata Power Ltd said on Thursday it has signed agreements with a consortium of banks to part fund its upcoming 4,000 megawatt power plant in the Western state of Gujarat. Debt from Indian banks and multilateral agencies would account for three quarters of the project cost, which is estimated at $4.2 billion. Tata Power, part of the diversified Tata group, said in a statement the first of the five power units will be set up in September 2011 and the entire plant would be commissioned by 2012.

The power would be supplied to five states, it said. About $1.8 billion would funded via external commercial borrowings from agencies including the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Finance Corp. Separately, the ADB said in a statement on Thursday it has approved a loan for $450 million for the project. Another 55.5 billion rupees ($1.38 billion) would be rupee denominated loans from Indian financial institutions and the remainder would be equity.

Read more in The Economic Times article.

PE fund to invest in energy

A Norway-based private equity fund will invest Rs 400 crore (500 million Norwegian kroners) in India's energy sector that is expanding rapidly to meet the South Asian country's growing need for power and oil.

The Indo-Nordic Private Equity AS was launched last week in Norway's capital of Oslo by Indian Ambassador Mahesh Sachdev and that country's richest man Stein Erik Hagen.