India’s Bank of Baroda expects to step up bad loan recoveries this financial year despite the temporary relief on repayments imposed by the central bank during the lockdown on the economy, Bloomberg News reported. That will help the country’s third-largest state-run bank improve its capital ratios and boost new lending, according to Executive Director Shanti Lal Jain. “We will be focusing on all avenues to recover bad loans including asset sales, one-time settlements,” said Jain, who heads Bank of Baroda’s stressed assets management and credit monitoring.
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Amid the coronavirus pandemic, preventing a viable firm from prematurely being pushed into insolvency, addressing individual financial distress and other challenges for insolvency regimes can be addressed through simple, transparent and time-bound measures, according to a World Bank Group official, Business Insider reported. Mahesh Uttamchandani, World Bank Group -- Global Lead, on Wednesday also said that due to the pandemic, 100 million people who were uplifted from poverty globally would fall back into poverty.
Even as the Centre has temporarily suspended the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) due to the current economic crisis following the Covid-19 pandemic, academicians have highlighted the threat of a possible surge in riskier behaviour of firms under extended immunity from the IBC, Business Line reported. Earlier this month, the Centre had issued an ordinance to suspend initiation of fresh insolvency proceedings against defaults arising on or after March 25 for a period of one year.
A rally in the debt of Indian banks is running up against concern they’ll need to take on greater risks as world’s worst bad debt pile is set to weaken further, Bloomberg News reported. While average premiums on rupee-denominated Additional Tier 1 bonds of the five biggest Indian banks have fallen to about 200 basis points from the end of April, they are still up some 117 basis points this year. And some investors say the rally has little room to continue amid concerns India companies are getting downgraded like never before.
The volume of Indian loans subject to moratorium is dropping, suggesting that fears about large-scale defaults on banks’ retail lending books may be overblown, according to analysts at Macquarie Group Ltd, Bloomberg News reported. Based on soundings with home lending specialist Housing Development Finance Corp. and Indian banks, “the unanimous feedback has been that there has been a decline in the total loan book under moratorium from the 25–30% numbers reported as of end-May,” analysts led by Suresh Ganapathy wrote in a note.
The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) has reconstituted its advisory committee on corporate insolvency resolution and liquidation, Telangana Today reported. The committee headed by Kotak Mahindra Bank CEO Uday Kotak, among other changes, has seen its expansion to 14 members instead of 12. “The committee shall advise and provide professional support, on the request of the board or its own volition, on any matter relating to the corporate insolvency resolution and liquidation dealt with by the board under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016,” said an IBBI order.
State Bank of India is seeking to recover two guarantees furnished by the former billionaire Anil Ambani, which according to a news report are worth more than $158 million, Bloomberg News reported. The state-run lender filed an application with the National Company Law Tribunal to appoint a resolution professional, according to an update on the court’s website. The tycoon, who had offered personal guarantee on the bank’s loans to his Reliance Communications Ltd. and Reliance Infratel Ltd., was given a week to reply on Thursday, according to the Press Trust of India.
Since India announced last month that it would temporarily suspend its insolvency law amid the pandemic, credit investors have grown concerned that some weaker borrowers may use the development as an excuse to delay or avoid debt payments, Bloomberg News reported. Yield premiums jumped after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled the suspension, and the extra spread that investors demand to hold short-term AA rated debt over AAA notes has risen to its highest in about nine years.
Last week, as coronavirus continued to threaten growth around the world, Moody’s cut India back to Baa3. Fellow rating agencies Fitch and S&P, too, have India just one notch above junk, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. The country is not simply a victim of the havoc wrought by the pandemic. Its problems predate the virus. One crucial weakness is a slow-burning crisis in the financial system: a long history of bad lending decisions and poor governance has contributed to deep pain at banks, shadow banks and mutual funds.
India should prepare to inject capital into state banks and private-sector lenders need to strengthen their balance sheets, to help bolster the economy against the coronavirus pandemic, according to a senior banker, Bloomberg News reported. “I do believe the government will have to be ready to support public sector banks with capital,” said Uday Kotak, the billionaire founder of Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.