Edelweiss has put its mutual fund business on the block

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Editor's note: Edelweiss Financial Services has put its mutual fund business on sale to help the group pare its pile of debt, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be named. “It is an ongoing process. There are a lot of people interested in the mutual fund business,” says one of the three people. The interested parties for the business include Edelweiss Asset Management CEO Radhika Gupta (backed by Cholamandalam Investment and Finance), IndusInd Bank and Hero FinCorp, according to all three people. For the Edelweiss group, which is trying to reduce its debt, the two businesses that could have been sold off were the insurance and the mutual fund units. “We had approached them to buy out the insurance business for one of our clients. They declined stating that it won’t garner much interest, as the insurance market is very saturated, limiting the valuation,” says a boutique investment manager, asking not to be named. The fact that IDFC’s mutual fund business gathered 13 bidders last year, including some private equity firms, seems to have …