Will L&T Chip Away Mindtree's Value With Takeover?

- Harichandan Arakali

ONE OF THE FIRST SIGHTS THAT one encounters driving into Mindtree’s ‘Global Village’ campus on the outskirts of Bengaluru is a Café Coffee Day outlet, in a traditional south Indian style building, complete with sloping tiled roofs and stairs leading to a semi-open seating area.

In recent times, this outlet must have become something of an eyesore for the founders of the Bengaluru IT company given that they feel its owner sold them down the river. VG Siddhartha urgently needs money for his own business Coffee Day Enterprises, which runs the Café Coffee Day chain. He has struck a deal to sell his 20.32 percent stake in Mindtree to Larsen & Toubro (L&T). L&T in turn is seeking an additional 15 percent from the open market and another 31 percent from institutional shareholders taking the total to as much as roughly two-thirds of Mindtree.

Mindtree’s founders, Executive Chairman Krishna Kumar Natarajan, CEO Rostow Ravanan, COO Parthasarathy NS and Non-Executive Director Subroto Bagchi, are vehemently opposed to it.