ITC draws up 10-year master plan
Multinational tobacco and hotels giant ITC has drawn up an ambitious 10-year growth plan for its new core business - property.
The plan is to be presented shortly to the board of the 60 billion rupee (about HK$11.4 billion) group, which would then give the finishing touches to the document. ITC has 48 hectares of prime land in Calcutta.
The tobacco giant has invested 2.7 billion rupees into the real estate business by buying the property assets owned by subsidiary ITC Classic and associate companies.
ITC Classic, a finance company, recently incurred huge losses that pulled the group's balance sheet down. The plan is to maximise the benefits from these acquisitions.
'The entry of ITC into the real estate business will be on a long-term basis, and not purely because it had picked up the real estate assets in trying to untangle the ITC Classic mess,' said a company source. 'Hence, the 10-year plan.' ITC expects to consolidate on the acquisitions by cleaning up the ownership issues relating to property and property holding companies.
'With the property market all over the country down, we are in no hurry to sell; we want to first clean up all ownership issues,' said the source. 'We will develop the land acquired from Classic in phases.'
