A platter of asset management-related items prepared whilst figuring out sans GPS the optimal route to grandmother’s house, over the river, through the woods or FDR to the Major Deegan.

Bid/Ask: R2’s Pranav Parikh

Pranav Parikh came to back to his native Mumbai in 2005 after spending a decade as an analyst and merger arbitrage PM at Jeff Raynor’s Fort Worth, Texas-based Q Investments, manager of the $2 billion multi strategy fund R2 (pronounced “R squared”). Immediately on arrival, Parikh (pronounced “Par Eek”) realized that private equity, and not public, represented the best way to deploy capital in the burgeoning Indian economy. Seizing on the telecom sector and drilling down into what he saw as a nonexistent niche, Parikh recruited a management team and formed a startup, XCEL Telecom, specifically to build and maintain cell towers. Earlier this year, R2 sold XCEL to American Tower for a 4 x return. Parikh spoke with HedgeWorld by phone recently.

HW: So with everything going on in India how did you decide on a cell tower play?

Parikh: The Indian telecom market has been exploding in the past few years, with anywhere from 10 to 15 million new cell phone subscribers per month, up from around 5 million new subscribers per month three years ago. Only around 2% of the population has access to a land line. There are now a dozen service providers including some major players and some ventures that are partly foreign owned partly government owned, so we felt that playing field was fairly crowded. We took a look and realized that unlike in the U.S. for example in India there was no cell tower industry. We created it.

HW: There were no cell phone towers in India?

Parikh: There were towers, many of them shared, there was just no tower industry like you have in the U.S. In India telecom providers own their own towers and what we found out is that it is very expensive to maintain them, you need security round the clock otherwise the equipment gets stolen, you need diesel generators because you can’t depend on electricity. We were able to get companies to realize they could save capital by sharing towers, and outsourcing the ownership of the towers to us.

HW: What’s the next India play for you?

Parikh: We’re seeing some opportunities in financial services. The banks in India are very limited in the kinds of loans they can make and the government is slowly relaxing the rules to the point where Indian financial institutions will eventually start to do some types of things they could not do before. In India there is really no such thing as buying a home with some small percentage down payment, no such thing as putting up shares to borrow money to do a leveraged buyout. Traditional banks here are tightly regulated. India has a long way to go, but we see reforms coming.

HW: I think U.S. banks could learn a thing or two from Indian banks.

Parikh: There were certain lending practices that are way too relaxed in the U.S. There was not only no credit boom in India there was no credit, period. In India we have the opposite problem, an economy that is regulated far too strictly. The financial services market here is going to be serving institutions and high net worth families.

HW: What can you tell us about the Indian private equity a market in general?

Parikh: It’s only a few years old, with very few players. As India bounces back from global recession the best way to profit is going to be by taking stakes in private companies but there are opportunities in the public markets too.

Three-Year-Old Lawsuit No One Cared Much About At the Time Suddenly Intriguing

In 2006, Fairfax Financial, a Canadian insurer, sued Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital and Jim Chanos’ Kynikos, claiming the funds had colluded to drive down the company’s stock. Now what appeared to be a sour grapes attempt to scapegoat some short sellers has taken on new importance as the Galleon insider-trading probe continues to heat up. Sources told Reuters that federal investigators are looking into some of the allegations contained in the lawsuit, possibly relating to Richard Choo-Beng Lee, who is cooperating in the case against Galleon founder Raj Rajaratnam. Lee is a former SAC technology analyst. Feds are looking at a number of SAC staffers but no one at the Stamford, Conn.-based firm has been charged as of yet.

The Energy Trade That Keeps on Giving

Fortune magazine profiles John Arnold with a look back at some of the former Enron trader’s greatest trading scores including his Jesse Livermore worthy squeeze of Brian Hunter when the former Amaranth trader tried to corner the natural gas futures market in 2006, a single trade that yielded a multibillion profit for Centaurus. Writer Telis Demos reveals Arnold has apparently put a big chunk of his wealth, around $700 million, into a family foundation to fund charter schools.

D.E. Shaw Doubles Down — On Office Space

At a time when many funds are shuttering or scaling down, quant powerhouse D.E. Shaw is going to expand its operation at 1166 Avenue of the Americas, where the firm occupies floors 4, 5 and 6. They’ll soon be taking up residence on 7 through 9.

3 Best: Special Thanksgiving Edition

3 Best Ways to Rock Out Turkey Day Leftovers:

No. 3
The Pilgrim: Start with one small, cold dinner roll. Slice it open. Add white (or dark) meat, stuffing. Microwave for 30 seconds. Top with cold cranberry sauce. Choke back. Repeat.

No. 2
The Full On: Just take everything from the bird to the smashed taters out of the fridge toss into one pan, douse with gravy and throw it in the oven for 10 or 15 minutes. If it’s after 4 a.m. be careful not to wake anyone up or accidentally fall asleep waiting for the oven to pre-heat.

No. 1
The Classic: White Bread. White Meat. Mayo, preferably Miracle Whip. Iceburg Lettuce. Pepper.

Done.

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