RATAN TATA, the 69-year-old boss of India’s Tata Group, has a big appetite for British companies. He bought Tetley Tea, paid £5.75 billion for Corus, the former British Steel, last year, and is leading the chase for Jaguar and Land Rover.

But he has shown a curious reluctance to list in the UK the businesses that make up the sprawling Tata empire.

Most, and in particular the big ones – Tata Motors and Tata Consultancy Services, the IT firm – have their main listing in New York or Mumbai.

Until now, that is. Tata is finally to make its London stock-market debut through its participation in a hush-hush new venture called the Mango Tree India Fund.

According to a piece of promo-tional literature from the brokers, Collins Stewart, which has come my way, Mango Tree will invest in “India-centric preIPO deals.”

It will “access opportunities too small for the Tata Group” but be 26% owned by it.

Investors will make their money when the companies are sold, either in stock-market floats or to the Tata Group itself.

The nonexecutive chairman will be Ishaat Hussain, Tata’s finance director.

It’s not a bad way for British investors to reverse the flow of funds from India to the UK – and, who knows, if it works out maybe it will convince Tata of the merits of a London listing. WHO said the French can’t be Americanised? Give them a few years in the City’s investment banks and look what happens: last week the French “oscars” was held in the Club Gascon restaurant in Smith-field, in London’s east end, and 250 top expats turned up.

The event was organised by Rothschild banker Laurent Fen-iou who conducted an internet poll of the 300,000 French expats who voted for their favour-ites in various categories.

Rugby legend Raphael Ibanez won top sportsman, Marc Levy best writer and Club Gascon co-owner Pascal Aussignac was top chef. In business, Vincent de Rivaz of EDF won the executive category.

In the financier section, Franck Petitgas, Morgan Stanley’s head of international investment banking, pipped Yoel Zaoui of arch-rival Gold-man Sachs, Jacques Garaialde of KKR and Bernard Oppetit of Centaurus Capital.

Private-equity chief’s own goal

PRIVATE-EQUITY individuals didn’t cover themselves in glory at last week’s open session of the Walker working group on industry regulation.

A rather silly partner from Carlyle Group pompously dismissed interest in private-equity pay packets as “financial voyeurism”.

Even when it was gently pointed out to him that perhaps 20% “carry” on deals worth as much as £10 billion on Britain’s biggest firms was probably significant, he simply repeated himself.

Still, he managed to be outshone by Simon Walker, the brand-new chief executive of British Venture Capital Association, who, agreeing rather inelegantly that there was an unnatural obsession with private-equity pay, said: “I can’t understand it. We don’t see this type of interest in other sector’s pay, such as football players.”

Erm. Where have you been? Not a good sign for the new supposedly “in touch” private-equity image.

- IT’S not particularly clever to make fun of someone’s name. But Prufrock found it hard to suppress a chuckle at the name of the chairman of Hecta Media, a British Virgin Islands-based firm planning to list on AIM.

He is called Fred Krueger, the same name as the popular cinematic serial killer.

No doubt the City is bracing itself for a Nightmare on Thread-needle Street – and a deadly listing. You’ve been warned. (Apologies, Fred.) Suits you to a tee...

- SO HERE’s a nice idea for a business: Sueeasy.com, where lawyers can pay cash for your case. The site targets victims who can log on and list the details of their complaint straight on to the web.

Interested solicitors can view the details and decide if they fancy fighting the case. But this is no networking site – it’s an auctioneer.

The lawyers must submit cash bids to take on the case and, in true eBay tradition, the highest bid wins. Lawyers are invited to “get leads from us. Bid on a case or class action list”.

And the website? It just gets all the cash.

- HERE’s how to crack the Asian markets, according to Altimo. Last month, the telecoms giant signed a provisional deal to invest $1 billion (£480m) setting up a network in Vietnam. Altimo, needing a charm offensive to secure the deal, decided to stage London’s first-ever show of Vietnamese water puppetry, where puppeteers stand waist-deep in water.

The show was booked, paid for and an invitation accepted by the Vietnamese ambassador, when someone realised the venue had no water. A 60-tonne water tank and theatre had to be hastily built. Let’s hope the right strings were pulled.

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