Religare Hires Kandiah From UBS, Plans to Recruit 80 Bankers
March 11, 2010, 11:20 PM ESTBy Joyce Koh, Michael Patterson and Zijing Wu
March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Religare Enterprises Ltd., Indian billionaire Malvinder Singh’s financial-services company, hired Sutha Kandiah as head of global equity capital markets, the second former UBS AG banker to join the firm this week.
Kandiah, who was UBS’s co-head of equity capital markets in Asia, will start at Religare Capital Markets Plc by the end of June and be based in Singapore, the company said in an e-mailed statement today.
Religare plans to hire as many as 80 people this year to expand its securities unit beyond India to surrounding Asian markets as well as Russia, Brazil and South Africa, Martin Newson, chief executive officer for global investment banking, said in an interview last week. Religare also hired Rob Flynn, former head of UBS’ Asian equities trading business, to lead its Asia investment-banking operations, the New Delhi-based company said on March 10.
“We are building an emerging markets investment bank,” said London-based Newson, who joined Religare in October 2009 from Dresdner Kleinwort where he was head of global equities. “We need to create the management team that can cope with the international expansion we intend to pursue.”
Kandiah helped UBS become the top underwriter for equity and equity-linked offerings in the Asia Pacific region in 2007 and 2008 and take the second spot behind Nomura Holdings Inc. last year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Deals
At UBS, he oversaw the S$4 billion ($2.9 billion) rights offering of DBS Group Holdings, Southeast Asia’s biggest bank, in December 2008 and the $3.3 billion initial public offering for Maxis Bhd., Malaysia’s biggest mobile-phone operator, in November last year.
Singh, 37, who along with his brother has a net worth of $3 billion according to Forbes Magazine, is expanding Religare’s investment bank amid a rally in equities that lifted the MSCI Emerging Markets Index by about 93 percent over the past year. Companies based in developing countries raised $77 billion in initial public offerings in 2009, garnering more money than those in industrialized economies for the first time since Bloomberg began compiling the data in 2000.
Religare Capital Markets advised Fortis Healthcare Ltd. on its purchase of a 23.9 percent stake in Singapore-based Parkway Holdings Ltd. from TPG Capital. The deal, announced yesterday, was valued at S$959.4 million, the biggest acquisition by the New Delhi-based company. Singh is also the chairman of Fortis.
--With assistance from Elena Logutenkova in Zurich. Editors: Stephen Kirkland, Joost Akkermans
To contact the reporters on this story: Joyce Koh in Singapore at jkoh38@bloomberg.net; Michael Patterson in London at mpatterson10@bloomberg.net; Zijing Wu in London at zwu17@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gavin Serkin at gserkin@bloomberg.net. Philip Lagerkranser at lagerkranser@bloomberg.net
