Billionaire Agarwal Sweetens Offer For Indian Unit Shares by 47%

(Bloomberg) -- Anil Agarwal, the billionaire founder of the Vedanta commodities empire, is offering a higher price to repurchase shares of his cash-rich Indian unit that’s key to his debt-repayment plans.

London-based Vedanta Resources Ltd. will now seek to buy 17.51% of Mumbai-listed Vedanta Ltd. at 235 rupees ($3.24) a share, it said in an exchange filing Tuesday. That’s up from the previous 10% at 160 rupees apiece.

The revised offer represents a small premium to the day’s 226.5 rupees closing price and a successful transaction will take Agarwal closer to full control of Vedanta Ltd. Shareholders had already rejected one takeover bid by Agarwal, whose personal holding company has amassed about $7 billion of debt that could be pared with the help of Vedanta Ltd.’s cash-rich balance sheet.

Read more: Billionaire Commodities Dealmaker Gets Squeezed by Rising Rates

If Vedanta were to accept bids for the entire 651 million shares, the consideration for the deal would be about 153 billion rupees versus 59.48 billion rupees expected in the January offer.

The offer runs March 23 to April 7, the company said in the statement.

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