Thursday, November 09, 2006: India Inc is coming of age it appears. On one hand, it is attracting huge equity investments from private equity funds, and on the other, it is now acquiring global companies like never before.

Private equity funds have invested about $6 billion so far this year-that is 250 per cent more than last year and Indian companies have made global acquisitions worth $15 billion, reports CNBC-TV18.

According to a Grant and Thornton report, private equity fund in flows from January to October this year have touched $6 billion, a whopping 250 per cent increase from last year and more than 200 private equity deals have been struck this year.

"Major interest have been in IT and ITeS this year, but what we are now looking at is the infrastructure and real estate sectors which are poised for significant growth especially once the regulations ease up and more foreign investments comes into the sector. We are going to see a lot of growth in this sector," says Dhanraj Bhagat, director, corporate advisory services, Grant Thornton.

And with the Tata Corus deal leading the way, Indian companies have made $15.72 billion worth of cross border M&A deals, which accounts for over 60 per cent of the total $24 billion worth of M&A till October this year. There have been 380 such deals in all, of which 147 have been outbound deals.

SOURCE-http://www.domain-b.com/finance/general/20061109_investment.html