Pawan Ruia-controlled Ruia Group will only bid for Korea?s Ssangyong Motors (SM) if, after completing due diligence, it finds the company can be revived. Ruia said on Tuesday that the group has only issued an expression of interest, and this doesn?t make any commitment to bid. He was speaking to reporters after the 83rd annual general meeting of Dunlop India in Kolkata.
? I am neither committing that we will bid for Ssangyong Motors nor am I declaring that we will not bid,? Ruia said. ? We will only bid if after due diligence we find that the company can be revived,? he added.
Ruia Group, the Rs 3000-crore conglomerate of 89 companies, has started due diligence on June 7, and so far, according to Ruia, it has received a number of data which the group?s management is currently analysing.
Ssangyong, which is undergoing a court-led restructuring since 2009, has provided the interested parties with KPMG data prior to the start of due diligence by the interested parties.
According to Ruia, SM has liabilities worth $700 million. Though the present SM management claimed that it was capable of catering to the European market, the state of the plant and the level of technology that existed at present have to be verified.
?We have one month?s time from the date we have started our due diligence and we will be very cautious in our steps and decision. If required, we will visit the plant in Korea and find out every detail,? Ruia said. He said since SM already has a huge liability, there was no point in giving it a high value.
SM can be worth up to $500 million and the deal value might run up to $600-800 million, according to market observers. But according to Ruia, the valuations coming out in the papers are too high and his group was not going to compete in such valuations.
?We will have a fixed pricing for ourselves and if the value matches our pricing, then only we are going to bid,? Ruia clarified.