Singapore-based hedge fund Tree Line Asia Master Fund along with associate entities had bought Goldman Sachs stake in at least half a dozen companies through open market delas since the begining of October.

The companies in which Tree Line picked up stake from Goldman Sachs include Mount Everest Mineral Water, in which the Tata group has picked up a majority stake recently, United Phosphorus and Igarashi Motors.

In a seperate deal, Tree Line has bought close to 2% stake in Om Metal Infraprojects from Morgan Stanley. All the deals, according to sources, were struck via the open market route and the transactions were executed through the block deal window.

According to analysts, Tree Line?s buying spree is a silver lining in the cloud as most of the FIIs are busy liquidating their positions in Indian companies ever since the market mayhem started hittinng the investment companies hard where it hurt most.

?A host of funds based in south east Asia, espescially from Singapore and Hong Kong, are quite active in the market recently. They are cherry picking in the stock market and are striking at least one deal a day. This shows that these funds, either hedge funds or PE (private equity) players or pure investment vehicles are seeing good opportunities in the Indian market despite the recent volatilty?, said an analyst with a local brokerage house.

The Singapore fund had bought close to 8% stake in the Tata?s controlled Mount Everest Minarel Water for a consideration of approximately Rs 21.55 crore through a block deal on BSE. Tree Line had bought 25,41,300 shares of Mount Everest at a price of Rs 84.8 per share recently. Similarly, it had picked up less than 1% stake in United Phosphorus from Goldman Sachs for a consideration of Rs 44.63 crore. Tree Line had bought 19,57,547 equities in United Phosphorus from Goldman Sachs at a price of Rs 228 per share through an open market deal.

In Educomp Solutions, Tree Line had bought close to 2% stake for a consideration of Rs 54.08 crore from Goldman Sachs and in Gujarat Flourochemicals it bought 9,93,500 shares from the FII for a consideration of Rs 10.88 crore. Goldman sold close to 6% stakes each in Geodesic Ltd and Igarashi Motors to Tree Line for a consideration of Rs 66.08 crore and Rs 2.61 crore respectively.

It also bought close to 2% stake in Om Metal Infraprojects from Morgan Stanley for a price of Rs 13.2 per share aggregating Rs 2.63 crore.