Bharti joins Tata, Mahindra, Welspun in acquiring stake in British firms

New Delhi: Bharti Enterprises' estimated USD 4 billion deal on Monday to acquire about 24.5 per cent stake in BT Group, Britain's largest broadband and mobile company, is the latest in the list of Indian companies buying firms in the UK since the turn of the millennium.

Unsurprisingly, the list of Indian companies acquiring firms in the UK is dominated by salt-to-software conglomerate Tata Group with another homegrown group Mahindra & Mahindra along with home textiles to infrastructure major Welspun and TVS finding prominent places.

Tata Tea was the first to pull off what was then "the biggest acquisition in the Indian corporate history" by acquiring Britain's most popular tea and the second largest global tea brand Tetley for 271 million pounds in February 2000. Tetley was famous for its TV advertisements featuring the Tetley tea folk. At that time Tata Tea was much smaller than Tetley.

In a pursuit that lasted over five years, including a heartbreak of losing out to a team of venture capitalist firms in the first instance in 1995, the perseverance of the then leadership of the Tata Group, including then Chairman Ratan Tata and Tata Tea Managing Director RK Krishna Kumar, finally paid off when the new owners -- the venture capitalist firms -- decided to sell Tetley and offered it to the Tata Tea.

Thus in January 2000, history was made in the Indian corporate landscape when Tetley became under the Tata fold.

Six years later, in July 2006, B K Goenka-spearheaded Welspun India Ltd acquired an 85 per cent interest in CHT Holdings Ltd, the holding company of Britain's leading terry towel brand, Christy at an enterprise value of Rs 132 crore. It gave Welspun group access to the premium, high-end Christy brand as also to the UK and European markets in its first step towards becoming a global home textile company.

As the Tata Group continued its global expansion drive in the first decade of the 21st century, Tata Steel won a takeover battle against Brazil's Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) to acquire Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus Group Plc for USD 12-billion.

After a bidding war, in January 2007 Tata Steel won the fight and completed the acquisition in April the same year. Tata Steel's cash offer of 608 pence a share was better than CSN's bid of 603 pence a share.

The acquisition of Corus, then Britain's largest steelmaker, not only catapulted the Indian conglomerate to the global corporate centre-stage, but also gave other domestic companies the self-belief of taking on multinationals much bigger in size.

A year later in June 2008, Tata Motors announced completion of the acquisition of British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover from Ford Motor Company for a net consideration of USD 2.3 billion, after announcing the deal in March, in an all-cash transaction.

Ratan Tata described the acquisition as "a momentous time for all of us at Tata Motors" while promising to retain the distinctive identities of Jaguar and Land Rover and continue to pursue their respective business plans as before.

Later on, in October 2016, another homegrown conglomerate Mahindra & Mahindra announced the acquisition of UK-based two-wheeler maker BSA Company for 34 lakh pounds (around Rs 28 crore).

The acquisition was carried out through Classic Legends Pvt Ltd, an arm of M&M, enabling it acquire/obtain licence of the BSE brand and utilise the same for selling, marketing, distributing motorcycles globally.

The principal activity of BSA is licensing of brands related to motorcycles. Incorporated in the UK, the company also has presence in Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, the US, Mexico and Canada.

In April 2020, Chennai-based TVS Motor Company joined the list with the acquisition of UK-based iconic bike maker Norton Motorcycles for 16 million pounds in an all cash deal.