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ABB to merge all Indian arms

Ambarish Mukherjee

NEW DELHI, July 20

ASEA Brown Boveri, Zurich, (ABBZH) has decided to consolidate its Indian operations and, as the first step, the Swedish conglomerate plans to merge all its Indian subsidiaries.

ABB has five subsidiaries in India of which only one is listed. The company has chalked out plans to merge all the four wholly-owned subsidiaries with the listed outfit, namely, Asea Brown Boveri Ltd.

ABBZH holds 50.99 per cent stake in the listed company. The other stakeholders are domestic financial institutions (22.14 per cent), foreign institutional institutions (3.63 per cent), mutual funds (2.32 per cent), non-resident individuals (0.08 per cent ), nationalised banks (0.15 per cent), corporate bodies (0.93 per cent), employees (0.01 per cent) and the remaining 17.8 per cent is with the public.

The four wholly-owned subsidiaries are the Faridabad-based ABB Instrumentations Ltd, the Nasik-based Introl (India) Ltd, the Mumbai-based Lenzohm Services Ltd and the Delhi-based ABB Analytical Ltd.

ABB Instrumentations is engaged in the field of process control products and solutions while ABB Introl is into the manufacture of control valves. ABB Lenzohm is in the field of repair and maintenance of large motors, alternators and transformers and ABB Analytical is engaged in the field of analytical instruments and systems solutions.

Speaking to Business Line, a company official said that the amalgamation process of the four 100 per cent subsidiaries are only at a nascent stage. It will have to undergo the long and time-consuming regulatory processes and approval cycles.

Primarily, the amalgamation proposal will also have to be placed before the company's board for a formal resolution after which the other processes will take off.

The reason behind such a move is consolidation of the company's Indian operations to improve efficiency and bring about synergy between functioning in various related fields. Putting all of them under one umbrella is likely to result in improved operatio nal efficiency, the spokesman said.