HONG KONG, May 18 (Reuters) – Last September, less than two weeks after an IPO plan was approved, the private equity owners of India’s Lilliput Kidswear got a call that set off a chain of events that could wipe out their investment.

According to sources with knowledge of the matter, an anonymous caller phoned Lilliput’s accountants on Sept. 22 with information that revenue figures might be inflated.

The next day, executives at the Mumbai offices of private equity firm Bain Capital got the same call. They quickly told their partners in Lilliput, TPG Capital.

What followed is an ordeal symbolic of both India’s rapidly sagging private equity market and a reminder of the perils that await foreign investors there.

It also highlights the broader souring of hopes for India, where policy paralysis, corruption scandals, flagging growth and high inflation have sapped investor confidence, prompting net foreign fund outflows of $540 million in March and April.

Bain and TPG have accused India’s largest kidswear company of accounting fraud, in a case filed with the Delhi High Court.

The court in November appointed SS Kothari Mehta & Co. to conduct an independent audit of Lilliput’s accounts, but the report remains incomplete.

HONG KONG, May 10 (Reuters) – Nomura has made it mandatory for managing directors to wait five years before they can cash the share portions of their bonuses, sources said on Thursday, the longest waiting period for such a payout at an investment bank in the latest pay cycle.

Last year, Nomura and other investment banks moved to make employees wait for three years to cash out the share portion of an annual bonus, wh ich for managing directors in the industry can be at least $1 million in cash and shares — on top of a $250,000 per year salary.

Moving to a five-year vesting period for all managing directors sets Nomura apart from the rest of the sector, and is the first time in recent memory that an investment bank has extended stock awards for an entire group of bankers over such a long stretch. Unlike most banks, Nomura’s fiscal year ends on March 31. Bonuses are communicated in early May.

The five-year vesting period for MDs only applies to the 2011-12 pay cycle, sources said. Whether the bank maintains that policy or not will be reviewed next year.

The bank’s bonus plan underscores the changes ripping through the banking industry, among them a massive overhaul in how bankers are compensated following the 2008 financial crisis and new global regulations.

“Nobody has done it that long. Five years is very unique,” said an executive recruiter who works with investment banks. “It’s caused a bit of a splash at Nomura,” said the head hunter, who did not want to be named because he works with the bank.

Deferring pay over the long term is viewed by some shareholders and regulators as a way to ensure that banks and bankers take less risk that could severely damage the franchise and the economy, as it did in 2008. Up until 2008, bankers were, on average, paid a roughly 50-50 combination of cash and stock that vested in a year.

HONG KONG/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Singapore state investor Temasek TEM.UL is buying $2.3 billion (1.4 billion pounds) worth of ICBC’s (1398.HK: Quote, Profile, Research) Hong Kong-listed shares from seller Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research), piling into three of China’s top four banks and raising its bet on the world’s second-biggest economy.

Temasek was burned by its financial industry exposure in 2008, hit by stakes in large European and U.S. banks that plunged in the crisis. But it has kept nearly 40 percent of its investment portfolio in banks it feels are strong and are capturing emerging market growth.

The deal for ICBC takes Temasek deeper into China’s banking industry, which has grown from insolvency six years ago to a sector that holds four of the world’s top ten banks by market value.

The Singapore state investor already owns stakes in China Construction Bank (0939.HK: Quote, Profile, Research) (601939.SS: Quote, Profile, Research) and Bank of China (3988.HK: Quote, Profile, Research) (601988.SS: Quote, Profile, Research). China assets accounted for 20 percent of its portfolio as of March 2011.

“Temasek has laid out its strategy before on where it thinks growth is. Within Asia, China anchors the growth, so Temasek is putting money where its mouth is,” said Song Seng Wun, an economist at CIMB.

The latest purchase was of 3.55 billion H-shares, or about 1 percent, of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (601398.SS: Quote, Profile, Research), the world’s largest bank by market value.

Temasek now has a 1.3 percent stake in ICBC, a Temasek spokesman said. This includes ICBC shares that the state investor owns directly as well as various other stakes held by Temasek-linked companies.

HONG KONG/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Singapore state investor Temasek TEM.UL is buying $2.3 billion worth of ICBC’s (1398.HK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Hong Kong-listed shares from seller Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), piling into three of China’s top four banks and raising its bet on the world’s second-biggest economy.

Temasek was burned by its financial industry exposure in 2008, hit by stakes in large European and U.S. banks that plunged in the crisis. But it has kept nearly 40 percent of its investment portfolio in banks it feels are strong and are capturing emerging market growth.

The deal for ICBC takes Temasek deeper into China’s banking industry, which has grown from insolvency six years ago to a sector that holds four of the world’s top ten banks by market value.

The Singapore state investor already owns stakes in China Construction Bank (0939.HK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) (601939.SS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Bank of China (3988.HK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) (601988.SS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz). China assets accounted for 20 percent of its portfolio as of March 2011.

“Temasek has laid out its strategy before on where it thinks growth is. Within Asia, China anchors the growth, so Temasek is putting money where its mouth is,” said Song Seng Wun, an economist at CIMB.

The latest purchase was of 3.55 billion H-shares, or about 1 percent, of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (601398.SS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the world’s largest bank by market value.

Temasek now has a 1.3 percent stake in ICBC, a Temasek spokesman said. This includes ICBC shares that the state investor owns directly as well as various other stakes held by Temasek-linked companies.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Temasek Holdings, the smaller but more visible of Singapore’s two sovereign funds, is moving into a new phase with its investment strategy, and could look more like Blackstone Group (BX.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), another $160 billion institution, which has grown from a focused private equity firm to a global asset manager.

The shift follows setbacks since the 2008 financial crisis; the loss of $5 billion invested in Western banks; the abrupt departure of the fund’s first non-local CEO before he’d even taken up the post; and the recent exit of dealmakers hired by CEO Ho Ching, the prime minister’s wife, who has led Temasek for a decade.

But as it charts a new path, Temasek, the world’s ninth-biggest sovereign investor, faces significant hurdles. These include a smooth leadership transition, reducing the fund’s cost of capital, and investing in places like Latin America and Africa where it has little experience, say analysts and people familiar with the way the fund works.

While Temasek stresses it remains focused on long-term performance and Asia, executives say they accept that a new era is beginning for the institution, with a wave of experienced finance executives arriving, more investments in developed markets to come, and tighter controls on risk.

“I would call it an evolutionary phase,” Dilhan Pillay Sandrasegara, Temasek’s head of portfolio management, told Reuters in an exclusive interview when asked if a recent management shake-up signaled a transition point.

The 48-year-old former M&A lawyer, who many see as being groomed for the top job, points out that as a long term, equity investment fund with a single shareholder, Temasek has nearly 80 percent of its portfolio in listed shares, putting it at the mercy of the market’s twists and turns.

That shareholder, Singapore’s finance ministry, felt the pain in the wake of the global financial crisis. Temasek lost S$55 billion ($43.4 billion) in portfolio value in the year to March 2009, prompting local lawmakers and analysts to take aim at how the fund manages risk, how it decides where to invest and how it then manages those investments.

SINGAPORE, March 27 (Reuters) – Temasek Holdings, the smaller but more visible of Singapore’s two sovereign funds, is moving into a new phase with its investment strategy, and could look more like Blackstone Group (BX.N: Quote, Profile, Research), another $160 billion institution, which has grown from a focused private equity firm to a global asset manager.

The shift follows setbacks since the 2008 financial crisis; the loss of $5 billion invested in Western banks; the abrupt departure of the fund’s first non-local CEO before he’d even taken up the post; and the recent exit of dealmakers hired by CEO Ho Ching, the prime minister’s wife, who has led Temasek for a decade.

But as it charts a new path, Temasek, the world’s ninth-biggest sovereign investor, faces significant hurdles. These include a smooth leadership transition, reducing the fund’s cost of capital, and investing in places like Latin America and Africa where it has little experience, say analysts and people familiar with the way the fund works.

While Temasek stresses it remains focused on long-term performance and Asia, executives say they accept that a new era is beginning for the institution, with a wave of experienced finance executives arriving, more investments in developed markets to come, and tighter controls on risk.

“I would call it an evolutionary phase,” Dilhan Pillay Sandrasegara, Temasek’s head of portfolio management, told Reuters in an exclusive interview when asked if a recent management shake-up signalled a transition point.

The 48-year-old former M&A lawyer, who many see as being groomed for the top job, points out that as a long term, equity investment fund with a single shareholder, Temasek has nearly 80 percent of its portfolio in listed shares, putting it at the mercy of the market’s twists and turns.

That shareholder, Singapore’s finance ministry, felt the pain in the wake of the global financial crisis. Temasek lost S$55 billion ($43.4 billion) in portfolio value in the year to March 2009, prompting local lawmakers and analysts to take aim at how the fund manages risk, how it decides where to invest and how it then manages those investments.

March 23 (Reuters) – ING Groep NV has put its roughly $775 million stake in Thailand’s TMB Bank Pcl on the block as the bailed-out Dutch financial services group pushes ahead with Asian divestments, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

ING, which is selling assets to help repay a 2008 rescue by the Dutch government, recently hired an investment bank to help find a buyer for its 31 percent stake in TMB Bank, the sources added, underscoring its seriousness to pursue an auction.

The planned sale could spark a takeover battle for TMB as the potential buyer of ING’s stake will be required to make a mandatory offer for the rest of the company under Thai laws.

ING and TMB declined comment. The sources declined to be identified as the matter was not public.

ING bought the stake in Thailand’s seventh-largest lender in 2007 for 460 million euros ($607 million). The Thai government also owns 26.1 percent of TMB, and has said in the past that it wants to sell its entire stake.

ING, which received a 10 billion euro Dutch government bailout during the financial crisis, is also expected to sell its Asian insurance and investment management business in a deal estimated to be worth over $6 billion..

It was not immediately clear whether ING will run the TMB auction simultaneously with the planned sale of the insurance and investment management businesses. Sources said no sale was currently underway for the TMB stake and it was unclear if ING could launch a formal auction any time soon.

HONG KONG, Feb 21 (Reuters) – As hundreds thronged a financial conference in Hong Kong last year to hear an executive of U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital, Doug Coulter took a seat in a nearly empty room next door at a separate session on the secondary part of the buyout industry in Asia.

Coulter, Asia head of private equity for LGT Capital Partners, was encouraged by what he saw.

“I just thought, ‘Wow, nobody is covering this. This is a great opportunity ,’” Coulter recalled, reminiscing about the 2011 Asia Venture Capital Journal event.

Five years after global buyout giants first flocked to the region to tap its growth, Asia’s private equity market has reached a tipping point. Maturing funds, a crop of inexperienced managers and global market instability are all opening the door for so called secondary players to come in.

Lexington Partners, Pantheon and Green Capital have launched in Hong Kong in the last year alone, joining LGT and others already here.

NewQuest, which spun off from Bank of America’s private equity arm, recently opened in Hong Kong as well. Most of the major secondary firms are now set up in Asia, taking a crack at what is a relatively small field compared to the traditional buyout industry.

These firms face a budding opportunity and a major challenge, as they too are susceptible to the region’s volatility and will be playing in a smaller market than in other parts of the world.

HONG KONG (Reuters) – The shock waves that jolted Nomura on January 10 were not so much sparked by the resignation of the Japanese bank’s wholesale division CEO Jesse Bhattal, but the news, shortly afterwards, that Tarun Jotwani, a close friend of Bhattal’s and a lieutenant being groomed to succeed him, was also out.

Nomura announced it was splitting its fixed income and equity divisions – a year after Bhattal and Jotwani, a fellow Lehman Brothers alumnus had combined them. Jotwani’s role as global markets head was eliminated, making him redundant.

Bhattal, 55, was allowed a graceful exit, though several sources familiar with the issue say he was forced to resign. London-based Jotwani, four years his junior, was swiftly erased from the Nomura system. The sources did not wish to be named as they are not authorized to comment publicly on the matter.

The double departure reveals just how quickly Bhattal’s relationship with Nomura’s senior executives collapsed, and exposes the deep strategic divide that emerged between the ex-Lehman camp and legacy Nomura bankers little more than three years after the Japanese bank bought bankrupt Lehman’s Asian and European operations.

Bhattal, the former head of Lehman’s Asia operations, was positioning Nomura’s wholesale group to focus more on the fixed income market – the area Jotwani knew best.

Like most banks caught in the grip of the market downturn, Nomura sought to pare back its costs. Bhattal wanted those cost cuts to be mainly in the weak performing equities division, specifically research and sales, the sources said.

But the Tokyo headquarters resisted. The ex-Lehman banker was taking aim at the historical heart of Nomura.

HONG KONG, Jan 21 (Reuters) – The shock waves that jolted Nomura on Jan. 10 were not so much sparked by the resignation of the Japanese bank’s wholesale division CEO Jesse Bhattal, but the news, shortly afterwards, that Tarun Jotwani, a close friend of Bhattal’s and a lieutenant being groomed to succeed him, was also out.

Nomura announced it was splitting its fixed income and equity divisions – a year after Bhattal and Jotwani, a fellow Lehman Brothers alumnus had combined them. Jotwani’s role as global markets head was eliminated, making him redundant.

Bhattal, 55, was allowed a graceful exit, though several sources familiar with the issue say he was forced to resign. London-based Jotwani, four years his junior, was swiftly erased from the Nomura system. The sources did not wish to be named as they are not authorised to comment publicly on the matter.

The double departure reveals just how quickly Bhattal’s relationship with Nomura’s senior executives collapsed, and exposes the deep strategic divide that emerged between the ex-Lehman camp and legacy Nomura bankers little more than three years after the Japanese bank bought bankrupt Lehman’s Asian and European operations.

Bhattal, the former head of Lehman’s Asia operations, was positioning Nomura’s wholesale group to focus more on the fixed income market – the area Jotwani knew best.

Like most banks caught in the grip of the market downturn, Nomura sought to pare back its costs. Bhattal wanted those cost cuts to be mainly in the weak performing equities division, specifically research and sales, the sources said.

But the Tokyo headquarters resisted. The ex-Lehman banker was taking aim at the historical heart of Nomura.