Coffee Day group to sell Bengaluru tech park to Blackstone

Mangalore Today News Network

Bengaluru, Aug 14, 2019: Coffee Day Enterprises Limited group’s real estate venture Tanglin has finalised the deal with Blackstone.

Coffee Day group is to sell its Bengaluru Tech Park to asset management firm Blackstone for about Rs 3000 crore, according to media reports. Coffee Day Enterprises Limited’s real estate venture Tanglin has finalised the deal with Blackstone, CNBC TV-18 reported. The selling of 100-acre tech park will likely help the company with the debt burden. However, the Coffee Day board has not decided upon the sale of the said asset in its board meeting held on 8 August 2019. In a letter that is expected to have written by CCD founder VG Siddhartha, the park was valued at Rs 3,600 crore. Both CDEL (Coffee Day Enterprises Limited) and Blackstone have declined to comment on the matter, the news channel reported.

CDEL is reeling under heavy debt of over Rs 6,000 crore and the news of the Blackstone deal comes days after founder VG Siddhartha’s untimely demise. The group had plans to sell the asset earlier as well but the same was deferred as CCD founder shifted attention to the sale of Cafe Coffee Day chain to Coca-Cola, according to various media reports. VG Siddhartha had tried to raise funds by pledging shares of his listed and four unlisted firms, filings with the ministry showed. Siddhartha had both personal and company loans and he had borrowed from a number of entities including organisations, including banks and financial institutions.

In his allegedly last letter, VG Siddhartha had said he was under tremendous pressure from private equity partner, lenders and the IT department and the same had pushed him to take an extreme step. "I am solely responsible for all mistakes. Every financial transaction is my responsibility. My team, auditors and senior management are totally unaware of all my transactions,” he said in the letter.

VG Siddhartha had earlier sold his stake in Mindtree to L&T and had made a profit of close to Rs 2,858 crore. Siddhartha had about 20% stake in Mindtree until 2019. He had made the Mindtree investment over a decade ago.

Courtesy:Yahoo.com