Tokyo, March 8th 2013 - Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (“SMBC”, President: Takeshi Kunibe), Kotak Mahindra group (“Kotak Group”), a leading financial services conglomerate in India, through Kotak Mahindra (UK) Limited (“KMUK”), the UK subsidiary of Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited (“Kotak Bank”), and Brookfield Asset Management Inc., (together with its affiliates, “Brookfield”), a leading global alternative asset management company headquartered in Canada, have been considering establishment of an Indian infrastructure focused private equity fund (the “Fund”). SMBC and Japan Bank for International Cooperation (“JBIC”) have committed their investments to the Fund.

The Fund will invest in the infrastructure sector in India and will be managed by KMUK. In addition to its financial commitment to the Fund, SMBC will contribute to the fund management by nominating personnel into various functions and also providing its highly-sophisticated expertise in infrastructure and project financing. As a cornerstone investor, Brookfield will also make a financial commitment to the Fund, and will support the management of the fund.

The Fund will start its operation with an initial corpus of approx. US$90million (including SMBC’s and JBIC’s commitment of US$22million each). The Fund will provide access to investment opportunities in the Indian infrastructure space to investors across the world including Japan, and with additional commitment from SMBC, the Fund will aim to increase the fund size to US$250million.

SMBC will continue to pursue multi-franchise business opportunities in the fast expanding Indian market, and will try to provide solutions for its clients’ needs to develop business opportunities in the Indian infrastructure market, taking advantage of both SMBC’s and Kotak Group’s network in the market.

Re-disseminated by The Asian Banker