Shyam Maheshwari – A long-term India fan on the credit and special situation side

Shyam Maheshwari is a partner and co-founder of SSG Capital Management, responsible for the company's investment activities in India. He has more than 17 years of experience in deal sourcing, analysis and investing in Asia. Previously, Maheshwari was a senior vice president in the Asia Special Situations Group at Lehman Brothers, where he was responsible for making principal investments in India. Maheshwari began his career in 1999 at Lehman Brothers as a credit analyst on the Asia credit research team. In 2005, he moved to credit trading. He holds an MBA from IIM Bangalore and is also a chartered accountant.

Shyam Maheshwari is the founder and
partner of SSG Capital Management. 

Shyam Maheshwari has been a long-term India fan on the credit and special situation side. He feels that India is perhaps the only emerging market in Asia that has opened the doors to foreigners to participate in the local currency debt and NPA markets. Shyam Maheshwari feels that the reforms on IBC have been pathbreaking, under the current government. This is the reason why all the ingredients of regulations, transparency, market access and the need for foreign capital are all present.

“While the NPA pool has declined over the past few years with resolutions and recoveries, the demand for credit and resolution capital far outstrips the supply”, Shyam Maheshwari points out. According to Shyam Maheshwari, in the in early 2000’s, there were very few foreign funds that participated in India. But that is not the current situation. Now, we have all the foreign players represented in India. The opportunities have become more appealing due to perceptible reduction in the timeframe of recovery (due to IBC) and risk (due to market access).

In contrast, Shyam Maheshwari notices that one would struggle to have similar access in China where markets are probably multiples of that in India. India has a special market condition where opportunities are easy attracted. A similar contrast with Indonesia is warranted where their bankruptcy law PKPU has not met success like IBC. Specifically, Shyam Maheshwari thinks the mid-market corporate may be the opportunity for credit while retail NPL could provide thrust to special situation opportunities.