Bloomberg
Soros Invests $100 Million in Reliance Entertainment (Update1)
By Shailendra Bhatnagar
Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire investor George Soros bought a stake worth $100 million in Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Entertainment Pvt.
Soros bought a 3 percent stake in the privately owned company, Sharad Goel, spokesman for Reliance Entertainment, said in New Delhi today.
The stake sale values Reliance Entertainment, which runs businesses including social networking and gaming Web sites, film production and distribution in the South Asian nation, at $3.33 billion.
Billionaire Ambani, whose Reliance Power Ltd. last month completed a record initial public offering, has invested in a range of media businesses since breaking with his brother Mukesh Ambani in 2005 and the splitting of the Reliance Group of companies founded by father Dhirubhai Ambani.
Rising incomes in the world's fastest-growing major economy after China is putting cash in the hands of consumers to spend more on leisure activities such as movies and online gaming.
Reliance Entertainment may sell shares in an initial public offering, the Hindustan Times reported yesterday, without saying where it got the information. A prospectus detailing the share sale for the stock market regulator is being prepared, the newspaper said.
The company will also operate television channels, the newspaper said. Ambani's Reliance Communications Ltd., India's second-largest mobile-phone operator, tied up in November with Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, to jointly offer Internet-based television services in India.
Mediaroom TV
Reliance will have the sole rights for Microsoft's Mediaroom TV software in India.
The group also has plans to start a direct-to-home satellite broadcast TV service in India to challenge cable-TV operators and tap subscribers in areas where Reliance doesn't have fiber-optic cables.
India is likely to have 128 million households with televisions by 2010, up from 105 million in 2005, according to a March 2006 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
Billionaire Ambani also controls Adlabs Film Ltd., an Indian film processor, producer and exhibitor.
To contact the reporter on this story: Shailendra Bhatnagar in New Delhi at Sbhatnagar3 at bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: February 8, 2008 02:21 EST
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