Morgan Stanley to open Bangalore centre to service US parent

Bangalore: Morgan Stanley will open a new Global In-House Centre (GIC) in Bangalore that will provide outsourcing services to the multi-billion dollar company’s parent in the US.

This new centre will be opened in 2014 and will complement Morgan Stanley’s GICs in Mumbai, the company said in a statement.

Commenting on the firm’s plans to grow its GIC capabilities and footprint in India, Bill Strong, Morgan Stanley’s Co-CEO Asia Pacific, said the company had reviewed global options for building a new GIC that can provide a mass of employees to support its global functions and saw value-add in expanding further our on-the-ground teams in India.

While this is a new investment, the company did not quantify the exact amount of investments.

However, it added that this new site in Bangalore is aligned with its continued focus on leveraging India’s skilled and diverse talent pool for the company.

Morgan Stanley has been present in India since 1993 and the back-office provides investment banking, asset management and research, capital markets-related research and sales and trading advisory services to its global clients that include high net worth individuals from 1,200 offices across 43 countries.

The firm will continue to grow its existing Mumbai-based centres, in addition to the new Bangalore centre, officials added.

Morgan Stanley study indicates India's urbanisation trend intact

Morgan Stanley today announced the findings of its latest AlphaWise work concluding that India continues to urbanize at a strong pace driven by a combination of uptrending consumption, robust job creation and growing financial penetration.

The study showed that India's urban population has grown by 2.8ppt annually over the last decade. Urbanization is driven by job offerings and infrastructure creation that lead to population growth. With this growth, it creates income, savings and consumption. "The findings will form the basis for medium-long term sector trends," says Ridham Desai, Head of India Research at Morgan Stanley. "These growth drivers will play a key role in forming investment views at the sector and stock levels."

The research notes that at the aggregate level, the Morgan Stanley's proprietary AlphaWise City Vibrancy Index reported growth of 5 percentage points. Within the top 50 cities, consumer services like retail book stores, restaurants (including fast-food chains) and multiplexes have seen the fastest growth during the past six-month period within the consumption component of the vibrancy index. To us, this reaffirms the underlying growth in discretionary consumption.

Among other key findings of the report, all three vibrancy index components (consumption, job opportunities, and financial penetration) reported sequential acceleration pointing that urbanization trends are still intact in India. Also, the pace of growth of each of the components has been 8%, 4% and 3%, respectively. Of the three components, job opportunities index has grown the fastest. The report reveals that Bangalore, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai are the top 5 vibrant cities. The relative vibrancy score for cities like Ludhiana and Meerut is inching close to scores of cities like Mumbai and Delhi, respectively.

Morgan Stanley, Isolux Corsan to invest $400 mn in India JV

Mumbai: Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners (MSIP), a $4-billion global infrastructure fund, has committed to invest up to $200 million in a joint venture (JV) with Isolux Corsán Concesiones in India.

Isolux Corsán Concesiones is an infrastructure concessions subsidiary of the $4-billion Grupo Isolux Corsán, specialising in large projects across construction, engineering and concessions.

Grupo Isolux Corsán will bring in an equal amount in the JV, bringing the total commitment to $400 million.

The JV is constructing three highway projects under long-term concession agreements awarded through the build-operate-transfer programme of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). The three projects, which totalled over 400 kilometres of road, were estimated to cost over $1.6 billion, said a Morgan Stanley statement. These projects had already received debt financing from leading financial institutions and substantial equity investment from Isolux Corsán, it added.

These projects are expansions of existing roads, and will link major cities, industrial hubs, as well as ports and tourist attractions.

“The JV with Isolux Corsán Concesiones adds to our successful presence in India’s transportation sector, providing us with an excellent road concession platform in a market that is experiencing rapid urbanisation and dramatic growth in vehicles,” said Gautam Bhandari, head of MSI Asia.

The road development programme undertaken by the NHAI under a public-private-partnership (PPP) model is among the largest PPP programmes in the world on Tuesday. NHAI’s National Highway Development Programme, initiated in 1999, is estimated to total $50 billion when completed. India has witnessed double-digit growth in vehicle registrations over the past 10 years, according to Euromonitor, and Morgan Stanley Research identifies it as the second-fastest growing auto market in the world.