Ajay Piramal, Chairman of Piramal Enterprises on April 26 said he has no intention to invest in Dewan Housing Finance Corp (DHFL), and is only evaluating the possibility of acquiring the troubled housing finance corporation's (HFC’s) home loan portfolio.
“We are looking at various portfolios concerning home loans, one of which is DHFL. We are looking at their portfolios. If it all we do, we are just acquiring a portfolio or part of the portfolio and not acquiring or investing in the shares of the company,” said Piramal on a post earnings media call.
“We are conservative when we look at the portfolios. We want to see the quality if the portfolio and what value we get,” Piramal said.
DHFL had assets of Rs 96,839 crore as of December 31, 2018.
The total loan book of Piramal grew 34 percent YoY in FY19 to Rs 56,624 crores.
Piramal has been trying to cut exposure to wholesale real estate lending exposure. The company had reduced lending to real estate from 83 percent in March 2015 to 63 percent in March 2019, and plans to further bring it down to 50 percent by the end of this year.
Piramal is focusing on diversifying risk by expanding into consumer and retail lending like home loans.
Housing finance loan book now constituted 9 percent or Rs 5188 crore of its total loan book at end of March 31, growing on 32 percent on a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) basis.
Piramal said other than real estate developers, the company is looking at lending to corporates for project finance, smaller and medium scale industries.
Shriram exit
Piramal said he is looking for the right party and value to exit Shriram Group, and hasn’t set any deadline.
“As far as Shriram is concerned we are looking at how we can create value for Piramal shareholders as well as for Shriram shareholders,” Piramal said.
Piramal also said that efforts are underway to see that all entities of the Shriram Group in the financial services can be merged together, consisting Shriram Transport Finance, Shriram City Union Finance and the holding company Shriram Capital.
Piramal owns 20 percent in Shriram Capital and 10 percent each in Shriram Transport Finance and Shriram City Union.
Shriram Group’s planned merger with IDFC Bank failed to take-off due to regulatory and valuation hurdles in 2017.
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