(Reuters) - Walmart (NYSE:WMT) Inc has agreed to pay $16 billion for a roughly 77 percent stake in Indian online shopping site Flipkart, the U.S. retailer's biggest foreign investment ever as it battles rival Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) in one of the world's biggest emerging markets.
The remainder of the business will be held by some of Flipkart's existing shareholders, including Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, China's Tencent Holdings Ltd, Tiger Global Management LLC and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
The investment was more than the $10-12 billion given by sources close to the deal in the past week.
Walmart said it expected the deal to knock about 25-30 cents off its earnings in fiscal 2019, assuming the deal closes at the end of the second quarter.
It also said that the deal included $2 billion of funding from new equity in Flipkart, which could be sold to additional investors in the future, diluting the U.S. company's overall stake.