NEW DELHI: Religare has acquired 97.76% equity stake in one of London’s oldest brokerage houses Hichens Harrison. This virtually seals the transaction for Religare which can now start integrating its operations with Hichens.

Religare Enterprises, which is the listed financial services holding arm of the Ranbaxy group, had announced a deal to acquire Hichens Harrison for around $110 million in March this year.

Religare got an approval from UK’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) for a change in control of Hichens last week. The brokerage firm under Religare Enterprises, Religare Capital Markets, through its indirect wholly-owned UK subsidiary has now declared acceptance of its open cash offer for Hichens Harrison.

Prior to the FSA approval, Religare had scooped up 58% voting rights primarily from core promoters of Hichens. It has now bought an additional 40% equity stake from prominent investors like BlackRock, Gartmore, Goldman Sachs, Unicorn and Credit Agricole.

“We are pleased with the development. We now intend to integrateHichens and scale up our business operations to the next level,” according to Religare Enterprises’ CEO & MD Sunil Godhwani. The acquisition of Hichens will allow Religare to create an international distribution network for Religare’s domestic institutional business. Besides, it will also allow Religare to offer fund raising options for Indian corporates among other services.

Religare, which is going to delist UK’s AIM exchange listed Hichens soon, is looking to garner the balance 2% over the next few weeks to seal the transaction. The firm is now working on integrating Hichens with itself. While the Hichens brand is going to be retained for now, Religare would be associated with Hichens as a corporate brand.