Marking the initial entry into the South Asian country’s retail financial business by a Japanese bank, a 74.9% stake in Fullerton India Credit Co will be purchased by Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc, as mentioned in a report released by Bloomberg.
Fullerton Financial is a unit of Singapore’s state investment fund Temasek holding Pte.
Without providing any terms of the transaction, as per a statement on Tuesday, at a later stage, Japan’s second-largest lender shall eventually be acquiring the rest of the Indian credit firm from Fullerton Financial Holdings Pte.
As mentioned by those familiar with the matter, an amount of 220 billion yen is to be paid by Sumitomo Mitsui, as reported by Bloomberg News earlier.
In recent years, Asia’s emerging markets have been allocated with resources by Sumitomo Mitsui who was faced with weak growth prospects at home. After acquiring a minority stake earlier, the bank took control of the Indonesian lender PT Bank Tabungan Pensiunan Nasional in the year 2019 while targets in Vietnam, India and the Philippines have been looked upon by Sumitomo Mitsui, according to CEO Jun Ohta In an interview in December.
A 49% stake in Vietnamese consumer lender FE credit was agreed to be purchased by Sumitomo Mitsui in April, while a 4.99% stake in Rizal Commercial Banking Corp of Philippines was said to be purchased by the bank in the previous month for 4.48 billion pesos.
