L&T to make 1st-ever hostile bid in Indian IT for Mindtree

BENGALURU: Diversified conglomerate Larsen & Toubro (L&T) is set to launch a hostile bid to acquire mid-tier IT services company Mindtree + , possibly as early as Monday evening. It will buy out Coffee Day founder and Mindtree’s largest shareholder, V G Siddhartha, and proceed with an open offer to public shareholders, spending as much as Rs 7,000 crore (or $1 billion), for a controlling interest, people directly aware of the matter have told TOI .
This will be the first-ever hostile takeover move in India’s technology industry, and a rare, full-blown tussle for a publicly-traded company in recent history. The four remaining founders of the two-decade-old, Bengaluru-headquartered Mindtree – Krishnakumar Natarajan, Subroto Bagchi, N S Parthasarathy and current CEO Rostow Ravanan – together own 13.3% of Mindtree and are resisting the L&T bid.