Introduction:
Acquisitions may be friendly or hostile. A friendly acquisition
is one in which the promoters wilfully transfer the control of the
management of the target company to the acquirer. In case of
hostile takeover, the same transfer is done grudgingly.
Historically, India has witnessed only a handful of hostile
takeover attempts. Foremost amongst these (predating the takeover
code) is the highly contentious and unsuccessful attempt by Swaraj
Paul to take over Escorts Industries. Thereafter, almost 15 years,
corporate India witnessed the only successful hostile takeover of
Raasi Cements by Indian Cements in 1998.
Mindtree, a tech company started by a group of Wipro around two
decades back is set to witness the first ever hostile takeover in
the IT sector. Aspiring to achieve an internal target of 1 billion
dollars, Mindtree which has missed the target twice is poised to
achieve the same in the current Financial year. This is largely due
to the aggressive