Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited commonly known as “Fairfax” is a public company which operates in the Insurance sector with its headquarter in Toronto, Canada. It was founded in 1985 by V. Prem Watsa and is the present Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fairfax. It is a financial holding company and mainly operates through its subsidiaries that are spread all over the world. Main activities of the company includes providing property, casualty and life insurance and reinsurances and assisting people in investment management and also in insurance claim management. In India, its subsidiary company known as Fairfax India Holdings Corporation was incorporated in 2014 with a view to acquire control and significant influence positions in India. For this they mainly focused on Indian investments and set their objective to achieve long term capital appreciation by investing in both public and private equity securities and also in debt instruments in India or in Indian business or in other businesses which has either suppliers or customers dependent in India and thus preserving their capital .
Fairfax recently announced that as a part of diversifying their operations in India, Fairfax India Holdings Corporation is planning to acquire another 26% stake in the financial services firm IIFL Holdings for a consideration amount of Rs1600 Cr.IIFL Holdings Limited, formerly known as India Infoline Limited is an Indian public sector financial service company. It was founded in 1995 by Nirmal Jain and is headquartered in Mumbai. They are mainly engaged in activities such as equity broking, portfolio management services, depository services, investment banking, distribution of mutual funds and other financial products. Also they provide assistance to people in commodity broking, margin funding, gold loan funding, mortgage funding, commercial vehicle financing, medical equipment financing, loan against shares and wealth management.
FIH Mauritius Investments which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fairfax India Holdings has issued a public announcement which contains a specific open offer to IIFL regarding the acquisition patterns. The offer specifies that their plan is to acquire 83.13 Million shares of IIFL at the rate of Rs 195 per share which amount for a total of Rs 1,621 crore.The acquisition process is to be managed by ICICI Securities with whom they have tied up in 2001 and became India’s first corporate agent for insurance. This deal is expected to be closed at last of this year and is subjected to the regulatory approvals in India.
