Larson & Toubro Will Make Mindtree Into a Big Company: AM Naik

The acquisition of Mindtree is the topmost agenda for infrastructure giant Larsen & Toubro at the moment and eventually the mid-sized IT firm is going to be transformed into a big company, L&T Group Chairman A M Naik said.

The  $20 billion conglomerate, which has taken its overall holding in Mindtree to about 26%, will launch the open offer to buy additional stake in around 10 days, he added.

“We continuously look for opportunities as they come by, but right now our mind is completely occupied on Mindtree and I hope we will be able to eventually make this into a big company as well,” Naik said.

“We have got around 26% stake in Mindtree and will wait till we get 51%. The open offer will be launched in about 10-12 days,” he added.

Elaborating on Mindtree promoters’ opposition to the takeover bid, Naik said they have started to realise that L&T is also an employee-centric organisation.

“I think slowly they also feel...they wanted to sell it anyway. Altogether it is about 12%(stake) and we are not saying you sell and go. Whenever they sell and if they want to sell it to us, we will buy the stake,” he said.

He added,  “I hope we will do better and do great things in IT and engineering service, once we complete our acquisition of Mindtree, we will be $3 billion and our idea is in three to four years, take it to $5 billion,” he asserted.

He added: “It was zero when I took over....application of new generation of technologies is now a major focus for us with L&T Nxt and I hope we will do a great job in this area.”

Earlier, L&T had purchased around 20% stake of V G Siddhartha and Cafe Coffee Day in Mindtree through a block deal for about Rs 3,210 crore and has since topped that with share purchases from the open market. In all, the infrastructure major is eyeing up to 66% stake in Mindtree for around Rs 10,800 crore.