StanChart spins off private equity unit

Bloomberg

Standard Chartered Plc reached an agreement to separate its private-equity unit, ending more than two years of effort by Chief Executive Officer Bill Winters to get out of the business.
Intermediate Capital Group Plc said on Monday that its funds are buying a majority of the bank’s private-equity assets in a transaction valued at about 790 million pounds ($997 million). The former Standard Chartered private-equity team, led by Nainesh Jaisingh, will run the portfolio in their new firm, Affirma Capital, after a management buyout.
The spinout will result in a $160 million charge, Standard Chartered said. The unit, which invests in companies across emerging markets, has helped create more than $1 billion of losses and restructuring costs since Winters took charge three years ago, and Bloomberg has reported he’s been looking for ways to exit the business since late 2016. Standard Chartered briefly pared its losses after the announcement, before the shares resumed their retreat, falling 2.2 percent at 11:17 am in London. The stock is down about 24 percent this year.
The business’s investments have included a Vietnamese kids’ play-center operator, an Indian movie-production company, a Jordanian poultry producer and, more recently, a Singaporean crane supplier. While initially profitable, its fortunes turned in 2015, partly because of the plunge in commodity prices.