{"id":63784,"date":"2018-04-21T12:01:07","date_gmt":"2018-04-21T12:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=63784"},"modified":"2018-04-21T12:01:07","modified_gmt":"2018-04-21T12:01:07","slug":"walmart-buy-controlling-stake-flipkart-early-next-week-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/walmart-buy-controlling-stake-flipkart-early-next-week-sources.html","title":{"rendered":"Walmart could buy controlling stake in Flipkart as early as next week: sources"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 18pt;color: #000000\">Walmart could buy controlling stake in Flipkart as early as next week: sources<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Walmart Inc (WMT.N) could seal a deal to buy a more than 51 percent stake in Indian online marketplace Flipkart as early as next week, two sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">The U.S. retail giant has been in talks with Flipkart for months to acquire a controlling stake in the firm as it looks to take on rival Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) head-on in India, a market where e-commerce is tipped to grow to $200 billion in a decade.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">SoftBank Group, which owns about a fifth of Flipkart through its Vision Fund, was unwilling to sell a part of its stake as Walmart was offering to buy existing shares at a valuation of $12 billion, a price the Japanese tech investor considered low, Reuters had previously reported.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">But that stalemate between SoftBank and Walmart has ended, one of the sources told Reuters on Friday. It was not immediately clear though, whether SoftBank had agreed to sell some of its shares in Flipkart.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Walmart\u2019s purchase of new equity is likely to value Flipkart at at least $18 billion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Reuters reported this month that Walmart completed its due diligence on Flipkart and had made a proposal to buy 51 percent or more of the Indian company for between $10 billion to $12 billion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">A third source said a deal was close, but things could still drag into the first week of May.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Some of Flipkart\u2019s main investors &#8211; U.S. hedge fund Tiger Global Management, South African tech investor Naspers and venture capital firm Accel &#8211; are likely to take a full exit as Walmart purchases their shares, sources have previously told Reuters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, former Amazon employees who founded Flipkart in 2007 in India\u2019s tech hub of Bengaluru, are also likely to part sell their stake as part of the deal, one of the sources said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">All sources declined to be named as the talks are not public.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Flipkart, SoftBank did not immediately respond to requests for comment, while a representative for Walmart in India declined comment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">SoftBank and Tiger Global own little more than 20 percent each of Flipkart, Naspers holds nearly 13 percent stake, Accel 6.4 percent, while the Bansals own just over 5 percent each of the company, according to data from business intelligence platform paper.vc.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 8pt;color: #000000\">Source:-https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-flipkart-online-m-a-walmart\/walmart-could-buy-controlling-stake-in-flipkart-as-early-as-next-week-sources-idUSKBN1HR2KQ<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/walmart-buy-controlling-stake-flipkart-early-next-week-sources.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Walmart could buy controlling stake in Flipkart as early as next week: sources Walmart Inc (WMT.N) could seal a deal to buy a more than 51 percent stake in Indian online marketplace Flipkart as early as next week, two sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. The U.S. retail [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":63785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[146,117626,128711,30775,128710,133087],"class_list":["post-63784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-business-news","tag-business-news-today","tag-latest-and-daily-business-news","tag-latest-business-news-usa","tag-live-updates-news","tag-walmart-could-buy-controlling-stake-in-flipkart-as-early-as-next-week-sources"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}