With $35 billion in investment capital, DE Shaw and Co., the world’s fourth-largest hedge fund, has set its eye firmly on India. This September, DE Shaw will open its second office in India, just 14 months after it started off in Gurgaon, outside New Delhi. Having already done $561 million in announced private equity deals, DE Shaw will have invested well over $1 billion in India by June. Not surprisingly, the firm, which is famous on Wall Street for being very reclusive about its trading methods, is unwilling to give out much detail about its gameplan for India. However, three clear patterns emerge from the four deals that the fund has disclosed so far. First, while it is largely sector-agnostic, it will likely broadly focus on companies that exploit India’s cost arbitrage advantage (think auto ancillaries, animation); opportunities that arise from deregulation (think media companies) and public-private partnerships (think infrastructure and real estate businesses). Second, deals will also be size-agnostic, from as little as $8 million up to $400 million or more. While none of this is very different from the way most private equity firms that are active in India today would look in terms of their deals, it is a third pattern that sets the hedge fund apart from its private equity peers. DE Shaw appears to be very flexible on how it will make money available to companies.   more »