Business
Family offices stall deal-making during Iran conflict
Azim Premji, Founder Chairman of Wipro, speaks during the inauguration of the Wipro Hydraulic Plant in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, on Aug. 22, 2024.
Vishal Bhatnagar | Nurphoto | Getty Images
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
Investment firms of ultra-wealthy families dialed back their deal-making in March as the Iran conflict rattled the market.
Family offices made 39 direct investments in companies last month, a 25% drop from February when adjusted for month length, according to data provided exclusively to CNBC by Fintrx, a private wealth intelligence platform.
That said, the family offices that are still inking deals are making bold bets. A quarter of last month’s investments were part of mega-rounds, or fundraises in excess of $100 million, according to Fintrx.
In March, Jeff Bezos‘ namesake family office co-led a $1.03 billion seed round for Advanced Machine Intelligence. Also known as AMI Labs, the new startup is training artificial intelligence models on real-world sensory data, rather than text.
Other boldface-name billionaires such as ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt and serial entrepreneur Mark Cuban also participated in the fundraise.
This trend of making fewer but larger deals is also playing out with corporate investors.
This past quarter, the total value of global mergers and acquisitions activity rose by 26% compared with the same quarter last year to $1.2 trillion, but the number of deals fell by 17%, according to data from LSEG. The second week of March was the worst week for global M&A in over a year, falling below $33 billion, LSEG found.
However, some family offices continue to be prolific dealmakers.
In March, Indian billionaire Azim Premji’s family office made at least four direct investments in companies, according to Fintrx. Premji Invest’s largest round, which it also led, was a $450 million Series A for Rhoda AI, another startup developing novel ways to train artificial intelligence models. Rhoda AI aims to train industrial robots on hundreds of millions of videos. Kleiner Perkins billionaire John Doerr also backed the round.
Hyderabad: Aurobindo Pharma’s board on Monday approved a Rs 800 crore share proposal to buy back up to 54.23 lakh fully paid-up equity shares of the company of face value Rs 1 each at Rs 1,475 a share.The proposed buyback, which is subject to regulatory and statutory approvals, represents up to 0.93% of the total number of equity shares in the company’s total paid-up equity share capital.The Hyderabad-based generics drug maker informed the bourses that April 17, 2026, has been fixed as the record date to determine shareholder eligibility and entitlement for the buyback, which will be carried out through the tender offer route on a proportionate basis, in line with SEBI’s Buyback Regulations and the Companies Act.All eligible equity shareholders, including promoters and promoter group entities holding shares on the record date, will be entitled to participate in the offer for which the company has already constituted a buyback committee.The company also said the board or buyback committee may increase the buyback price and correspondingly reduce the number of shares to be bought back up to one working day before the record date but the overall size will remain unchanged.The Rs 800 crore buyback size excludes transaction costs and related expenses such as brokerage, taxes, filing fees, legal charges and publication expenses, it said.The latest buyback comes less than two years after the last buyback offer aggregating to Rs 750 crore that was made at Rs 1,460 a piece in August 2024 by the company.As of December 31, 2025, promoters and promoter group entities held 51.82% stake in the company, mutual funds 19.52%, foreign portfolio investors 13.94%, insurance companies 5.50%, and public shareholders and others 7.93%.
The Felix Project is among the organisations feeling the effects of increased costs due to the conflict in Iran.
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Aurobindo Pharma gets board nod for Rs 800 crore share buyback plan – The Times of India
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