Wednesday, July 4, 2007

India's richest real estate baron

DLF promoter K P Singh has emerged as the richest real estate baron after his company's initial public offering closed on June 14.

Promoters of the dozen top listed real estate developers in the country, including DLF Ltd, which will be listed on July 05, 2007, are worth a massive Rs 125,845 crore (or over $30 billion).

However, the lion's share of this net worth (derived on the basis of the latest m-cap) lies with DLF's K P Singh and his family -- Rs 77,915 crore (around $19 billion) based on the allotment price of Rs 525 per share and their shareholding of around 87.3 per cent in the company. The shares are expected to list at premium to the alloted price and hence Singh may be richer than what predicted.

This would make K P Singh the fourth richest Indian by today's market capitalisation, after Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani and Sunil Mittal. He would overtake Wipro's Azim Premji, who ranks immediately after him.

In effect, the DLF promoter family accounts for around 60 per cent of the realty wealth as denoted by market cap.

Second, and by a distant margin, is the Unitech Ltd promoter family -- which includes Ramesh Chandra and his sons Sanjay and Ajay. Their net worth is about half of DLF's --at Rs 30,544 crore (around $7.4 billion).

The Unitech promoters hold a 74.33 per cent stake in the listed entity. Last August, Business Standard had valued Ramesh Chandra's net worth at Rs 12,670 crore.

In March, Forbes ranked Chandra as the world's 114th richest billionaire.

The substantial difference between the net worth of DLF and Unitech promoters is significant because the two companies are considered comparable in terms of their land assets, among other things.

The Bangalore-based Menon family and associates own just under 87 per cent of Sobha Developers. At Rs 5,277 crore ($1.28 billion), the Menons' net worth is nearly a fifth of the Unitech family's.

Parsvnath Developers' Pradeep Jain and family are ranked fourth -- with Rs 4,768 crore ($1.16 billion) of net worth on the basis of their 80.33 per cent stake in the company.




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