Rostow Ravanan, CFO of Mindtree Consulting said MindTree bought Aztecsoft stake from Lehman, BSMA and Citigroup yesterday. All deals are valued at Rs 80 per share, he said. They will go ahead with the open offer and will buy as much as possible.

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18's exclusive interview with Rostow Ravanan:

Q: Can you give us some details of how much stock you bought from the open market in the last couple of days and which institutions from?

A: Yesterday, we bought 4 million shares from an institution called TDA Capital Partners, which I think represented Lehman, BSMA and Citigroup, two-three large financial institutions, which held a stake. So they wanted to sell after we'd announced the transactions. Today a few more institutions reached out to us and that’s approximately about 5-6 million shares, which we bought today.

Q: What is your eventual game plan? How much stake are you for in the market, because retail investors would now worry about how much of their tendered stock you would accept in the open offer?

A: We made an open offer upto 20%. So we will accept that much in the open offer. There is no specific target that we have in mind. After we announced the transaction, some of the people who wanted to sell have offered to sell. So if there are large blocks available, we would at least consider buying for the next day or two. So that’s where we are right now. 

Q: Who sold today and what price these deals are being struck at?

A: These are all at Rs 80/share. On today’s block, I don’t have the details just yet because our brokers have called and told us that approximately 5-5.5 million shares were traded this morning.

Q: Aside from e4e, anyone else who holds a sizeable chunk that you would want to pick up from the open market?

A: Not too sure. I think few individuals own a little bit maybe 2-3% sort of a stake, which is what we got from the public filings that Aztecsoft has made before the transaction and one or two domestic mutual funds and international mutual funds also hold a reasonable sized stake, maybe 2-3%.

Q: Just to clarify, you have already got more than 20% in negotiated deals in the secondary market; you would still take 20% in the open offer?

A: Right.

Q: What is the eventual plan, you want to build it upto close to as much as you can and eventually consider a delisting of Aztecsoft as well?

A: We would buy as much as we can as long as prices make sense. But the eventual game plan is to merge Aztecsoft into MindTree and not go with the delisting route.