B.K. Modi buys Wall Street Finance

B.K. Modi acquired a 51% stake in the forex and money transfer firm Wall Street Finance. ADAG Group's Reliance Money exited from the company by selling its entire 36.8% holding in the previous week for over Rs220mn. B.K. Modi announced an open offer for another 20% stake in Wall Street Finance. The entire deal of acquiring 71% stake would be worth about Rs1bn. In a market transaction, Modi-promoted Spice Investments & Finance Advisors purchased over 1.66mn equity shares, representing 14.32% stake in Wall Street Finance at a price of Rs55 per share, in a bulk deal on the BSE. The shares were bought apparently from the promoters Patel Holding and Arif Asgar Patel. In addition, Spice struck an off market transaction to acquire 36.6% from Transways Combines, a unit of Wall Street Finance. Transways had bought the shares from Reliance Money after the firm decided to quit the investment in less than one year after picking up 33.55% stake in October 2008 and hiking it to 36.58% through open market share transactions. Enam Securities was reportedly the merchant banker to the deal.