Tata Sons to make open offer for CMC stake

BANGALORE: Privately-held Tata Sons will make an open offer to buy a further

20 per cent stake in CMC Ltd., a group official said on Wednesday.

Tata Sons is an unlisted holding company of the Tata group, one of India's

biggest conglomerates. It won a bid last week to buy a 51 per cent holding in

state-run computer software and maintenance company CMC under a privatization

program.

"We will make an open offer as per SEBI (Securities Exchange Board of

India) guidelines on the terms of disinvestment," a spokesman for Tata

Consultancy Services (TCS), a unit of Tata Sons, told Reuters, quoting company

chief executive S.Ramadorai.

TCS is India's biggest software services exporter. CNBC television channel,

quoting Ramadorai, reported earlier on Wednesday that the offer would be at Rs

280 a share, based on the past six-months market average of the stock, but the

spokesman said the chief executive had given no numbers.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.