Finance
Warburg Pincus to acquire Shriram Housing Finance for Rs 4,630 cr in its biggest India deal
Financial services firm Shriram Finance will sell its housing finance arm to private equity major Warburg Pincus for Rs 4,630 crore. This is reportedly Warburg Pincus’ single-biggest deal in India in over two decades.
Warburg will invest another Rs 1,000 crore in the 2011-incorporated Shriram Housing Finance (SHF) after the closure of the deal, which is expected by the end of fiscal in March 2025, Shriram’s executive vice chairman Umesh Revankar said. SHF has grown at a compounded annual rate of over 50 per cent and the Shriram group wishes to focus on its mainstay of small business and vehicle lending rather than pumping capital into the company, Revankar added.
He said Shriram Finance has made an internal rate of return of 22 per cent on the capital deployed in SHF.
Shriram Finance owns 83.8 per cent of SHF while 14.8 per cent is with PE player Valiant, which is also divesting its stake in full, and the remaining 1.4 per cent is with employees. Under the deal, SHF would be acquired by Warburg Pincus through its affiliate Mango Crest Investment Ltd from all the sellers.
“The proposed transaction is valued at Rs 4,630 crore for equity and convertible instruments of SHFL,” Shriram Finance said in a regulatory filing.
The deal needs go-ahead from National Housing Bank, Competition Commission of India and Reserve Bank, he said. Shriram Finance is one of India’s leading NBFCs, serving over 84 lakh customers across India offering commercial vehicle loans, two-wheeler loans, and MSME financing.
SHF has a total employee base of 3,000 people. Following the conclusion of this transaction, it said,SHF will operate as a standalone entity, continuing to enhance value for its stakeholders as it preserves its heritage and mission to provide housing finance solutions to the under-served population of the country.
Shriram Finance MD & CEO Y S Chakravarti said, “We believe that this transaction is in the best interest of SHFL shareholders towards greater value generation and comes at an opportune time for us as well.”.
Shriram Finance Limited will continue to focus on growth led by the short to medium-tenor consumer finance business while Shriram Housing Finance will now chart out its differentiated path, he said. Narendra Ostawal, Head of India Private Equity, Warburg Pincus said, “We remain excited about the affordable housing finance segment in India…their strong team, consistent improvement in financial metrics, geographically diversified presence, customer-first approach, and robust processes are aspects that stand out.” The Shriram Finance scrip closed 1.91 per cent down at Rs 2,300.90 a piece on the BSE as against a 0.15 per cent gain on the benchmark.
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The World Bank is ditching its commitment to steer 45 percent of its spending toward projects with climate benefits, after facing pressure from the Trump administration.
The move, announced Monday following a meeting of the bank’s board of directors last week, marks a victory in President Donald Trump’s effort to purge climate policies from U.S. foreign policy. His administration has described the target as “distortionary” and “nonsensical.”
The bank preserved its broader Climate Change Action Plan — of which the 45 percent target was a key metric — just days before it was set to expire at the end of June. In addition to directing money toward climate projects, the plan provides technical support for helping countries reduce their greenhouse gas pollution and adapt to rising temperatures.
“We will retire the 45% climate co-benefits target,” the World Bank Group said in a statement, noting that it had “done significant work in answering client demand and needs.”
The bank’s work on climate “is and will remain firmly client driven, supporting them in delivering on their own ambitions as set out in their national plans and NDCs,” the statement added, referring to the nationally determined contributions countries submit under the Paris Agreement.
The decision to drop the climate finance target follows months of pressure from the Trump administration. People with knowledge of the negotiations said the U.S. was firm that the target must go despite other countries indicating their support for the bank’s climate goal. The U.S. has sway over the bank’s decisions as its largest shareholder.
Beyond the finance target, the Climate Change Action Plan also provides diagnostic reports on countries’ climate and development goals and aims to align lending with the Paris Agreement, which calls for preventing temperature rise from surpassing 2 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution.
The bank said it would honor a board request to undertake an independent evaluation of the climate plan to determine if it’s helping countries grapple with rising temperatures. The decision effectively extends the plan beyond its expiration at the end of June.
The climate target was supported by many of the bank’s shareholders. It’s also been a prominent signal of the bank’s support for climate action at a time when the impacts of rising temperatures are accelerating.
“This is way, way away from where we should be for a responsible financial architecture,” said one official from a developed country who was directly involved in the negotiations and was granted anonymity to describe internal discussions.
The bank will continue to track and report on the amount of money going to projects with climate co-benefits. It exceeded its own target last year by directing 48 percent of its financing to climate-related projects.
Other climate targets embedded in agreements that govern different arms of the bank will remain, including one for the International Development Association, the bank’s fund for the poorest countries.
Multilateral development banks play a key role in global climate negotiations, where wealthy countries have committed to helping provide $300 billion a year for poorer countries by 2035. That no longer includes the United States, which has left the Paris Agreement and will exit the underlying United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change early next year.
“Targets send enormous signals about an institution’s direction of travel,” said Clemence Landers, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. “At the same time, it’s a sign of the times and the World Bank is doing its level best to not rankle its largest shareholder.”
She believes the bank will continue financing renewable energy projects in countries that want them, despite having dropped its climate target.
“I wouldn’t be shocked if the bank continued to have an extremely robust clean pipeline with or without this target,” said Landers.
The bank says retiring the 45 percent target is part of its shift from a focus on “inputs to outcomes.” It will continue to monitor and report net greenhouse gas emissions across its projects and countries’ ability to withstand climate risks.
“We will continue to report to the Board on progress, including on climate co-benefits, and to contribute to our related joint MDB efforts,” the statement said, referring to its role as a multilateral development bank. “We will explore and discuss ways to better structure our engagement on adaptation, nature and pollution.”
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