...economies. the tiger is biting back, challenging those that outsource this work and even acquiring such companies.

Since the start of last year, the value of acquisitions by Indian companies of overseas businesses, at US$28.3bn, has outstripped the value of purely domestic deals by more than 50%.

Larger acquisitions dominate this crop, including such landmark deals as Hindalco's US$5.8bn purchase of US aluminium group Novelis and Ford's recent US$2.3bn sale of Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata Motors.

Some of the UK's most sacred items have also been taken East, such as Scottish whisky group Whyte & Mackay, acquired by Kingfisher beer entrepreneur Vijay Mallya for US$1.18bn. Even English cricket is under threat by the lucrative Indian Premier League.

"2007 was a turning point. There have been a number of bigger ticket transactions," says Ralph Voltmer, a partner at US law firm Covington Burling, which has advised telecom-focused conglomerate Reliance. "Many large Indian companies are truly multinational now. I expect this trend to continue," he says.

The acquisitions of such trophy assets inevitably grab the limelight, drawing attention away from the more prosaic deals that have happened over the past 18 months. There have been 369 in all, which is still half the number of domestic deals. Ian Gomes of KPMG says there are "scores of deals in the US$50m to US$80m range".

"Over the last four years there have been lots of smaller deals, where Indian companies have bought overseas, but these have slowly been getting larger," says Ian Scott, a partner at lawyer Ashurst, which has had an office in India for 14 years.

Andy Currie, managing director of Catalyst, has noticed a distinct rise in interest from Indian potential purchasers of UK assets, saying: "Five years ago, we had no Indian interest when running disposal mandates, but now 80% of such deals will have interest from India."

The UK mid-market adviser is part of cross-border network Mergers Alliance, whose Indian member Singhi recently organised a conference in Delhi attended by more than 300 corporates, keen to learn about doing overseas acquisitions.

"A third of Indian money invested overseas goes into the UK," says Currie, citing the cultural links through the Empire and the English language as important reasons for this. He has sold building product, construction and IT businesses to Indian buyers.

Drugs...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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