Goldman Sachs invests Rs 500 crore in Ozone Techno Park

Mumbai | Benagluru: At a time when most non-banking financial companies have stopped making new investments or disbursing funds to real estate developers across the country, global institutional investor Goldman Sachs Group has invested around Rs 500 crore into an income-producing asset of Bengaluru based Ozone Group, said multiple persons with direct knowledge of the development.Goldman Sachs has made this investment into the developer’s commercial project Ozone Techno Park in Chennai jointly through two of its NBFC arms Goldman Sachs (India) Finance and Goldman Sachs Investments (Mauritius). The investment has been made through a structured debt arrangement.Located on Chennai’s Old Mahabalipuram Road, Ozone Techno Park is a ready and fully leased commercial project that houses tenants like HCL, CTS, Rainbird Healthcare and Firstsource Solutions. The IT park is spread over around 7 acres with total leasable area of nearly 1 million sq ft across the 10-storey complex.“It’s a safe bet given that the project is fully-leased to blue chip global clients and offers steady stream of rental yield. The deal will be completed in two tranches,” said one of the persons mentioned above.The company is likely to use part of the funds raised to repay some of its debt obligations including Urban Infrastructure Venture Capital that has exposure to some of its other projects.With lending by banks to realty slowing down since 2011-12, the role of NBFCs and housing finance companies had gained prominence. The liquidity crisis that started with the default of IL&FS has changed the scenario completely. The Goldman Sachs-Ozone transaction stands out as this is for a yield-producing commercial asset and is not a private equity investment but it has been done through NBFC units.ET’s email query to Ozone Group remained unanswered until the time of going to press. Goldman Sachs and Urban Infrastructure Venture Capital Fund declined to comment. Income-producing commercial assets have proved to be a major draw for most of the global institutional investors that are active in India or are keen to invest here.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/2onL84h