Eike Bautista, the Brazilian billionaire, is now seeking partners for the expansion of his EBX Group. The partners would be given shares, essentially cutting the founder's shareholdings by more than half.
The analysis was provided by fellow billionaire Andre Esteves in an interview with Estado de S. Paulo. Batista owns as much as 70% of the oil, mining, power, port services and shipbuilding conglomerate. This is not normal according to Esteves, who himself helped establish and be president of BTG Pactual Group, Brazil's renowned investment bank.
Normal, according to Esteves, would be between 20% to 30% shareholdings. He made these remarks as the new adviser and banker for EBX and Batista himself.
With EBX share prices tumbling and the writedown of at least 53 billioon reais or US$26.4 billion of the companies, many investors are very concerned as to the ability of Batista to raise capital funding needed to modify the companies from mere start-ups to revenue generating going concerns. All of the companies are behind schedule and have not generated the revenues projected.
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