Indian firms' foreign purchases: Gone shopping - United Kingdom

As Indian companies juggle their pricey foreign acquisitions, the country’s largest telephone company embarks on the biggest shopping expedition of them all

INDIANS are fond of shopping abroad, a habit left over from the era of import substitution, when they had to put up with shoddy homespun goods in the name of national self-sufficiency. This taste for overseas purchases is shared by Indian companies. Between 2000 and 2008 they announced over 1,000 international mergers or acquisitions, worth over $72 billion, according to Dealogic, a research firm. Most of those deals have been sealed since 2006 (see chart).

On May 25th Bharti Airtel, the country’s biggest mobile-network operator, announced that it was exploring a deal that would surpass the $12 billion Tata Steel paid for Corus, an Anglo-Dutch steelmaker, in 2007: a tie-up with MTN, a South African mobile giant, which rebuffed a previous approach last year. The deal, if it ever happens, would create one of the world’s biggest mobile operators, with 200m fixed and mobile subscribers across 21 countries. ...