Infrastructure major GMR Group on Thursday said that it will now sell 49% in its airports subsidiary, GMR Airports, to investors including the Tata Group, Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and SSG Capital Management.

The earlier agreement between the GMR Group and the investors, signed last year, was to sell 44.44% stake in GMR Airports for Rs 8,000 crore.

According to the earlier agreement, the proposed investment was to be disbursed in two parts — a Rs 1,000-crore equity infusion in GMR Airports, and purchase of GMR Airport’s equity shares worth Rs 7,000 crore from GMR Infrastructure and other group companies.

The debt-laden GMR Infrastructure’s plan was to then demerge its airport vertical from the energy, highways, urban infrastructure & transportation vertical. The deal had valued the group’s airport business at Rs 18,000 crore.
It was expected to bring down GMR Infrastructure’s debt to around Rs 12,000 crore.

The transaction will be done in one or more tranches and is pending regulatory approvals, GMR said in an exchange filing. “This is another step in our endeavour to de-leverage and demonstrate our commitment towards the same.

An amended and restated shares subscription and purchase agreement and shareholders agreement has been executed to give effect to the above,” the exchange filing stated without divulging the details of the amended agreement.

On October 1, 2019, the Competition Commission of India had cleared the acquisition of up to 55.2% equity stake in GMR Airports by TUTPL, a Tata Group entity, Valkyrie, an affiliate of GIC and Solis, an investment arm of the SSG Group.

However, the proposed transaction was met with resistance from Airports Authority of India,which wanted to ensure that the deal does not break the investment restrictions for owners of domestic airlines in airport operators.

GMR had last year announced that post the transaction’s completion, Tata Group would hold 20% stake in GMR Airports, while GIC and SSG would hold 15% and 10% stake, respectively.

It was later reportedly decided that the deal structure should be changed to reduce the holdings of Tata Group, which owns two airlines, to below 15%.

GMR Airports runs India’s busiest airport in New Delhi and the airport in Hyderabad.