The near-collapse of IL&FS has punctured confidence in India’s shadow banking sector and the recriminations that followed inevitably focused on the capital market fragilities that led India’s largest infrastructure lender to default on part of its $13bn of debt, the Financial Times reported. What has been overshadowed in the wake of IL&FS’s woes is the diminished state of infrastructure lending itself, the foundational brick in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to take the economy a step or two higher and stay there.
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Even before the body of coffee-chain tycoon V.G. Siddhartha was recovered from a river in southern India this week, the financial strains that appear to have led him to take his own life were beginning to emerge, Bloomberg News reported. A letter purportedly written and signed by Siddhartha and sent to senior management of Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd. laid out in stark words his struggles with a “serious liquidity crunch” that in turn had led to “tremendous pressure” from lenders and an unnamed private-equity investor. “I would like to say I gave it my all,” Siddhartha wrote.
Lok Sabha on Thursday passed amendments to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, with the government asserting that the spirit behind the law is not to allow companies to die, India Today reported. Rajya Sabha has already passed the bill and with its passage in the lower house, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code is set to be amended. Responding to the debate on the bill, Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the liquidation of a company is not the sole agenda of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. As many as seven sections of the Code are to be amended.
One of Asia’s best bond rallies is bolstering Indian banks’ efforts to accelerate clean-up of the world’s worst bad-loan pile, Bloomberg News reported. The benchmark 10-year sovereign bond yield dropped about 50 basis points in July, extending the past year’s decline to more than 130 basis points. Each basis point fall in the yield adds 3.5 billion rupees ($50 million) to banks’ treasury gains, boosting their ability to writedown bad loans, estimates by ICRA Ltd. show.
A consortium of lenders, led by Syndicate Bank, is set to agree to a restructuring scheme for Reliance Infrastructure Ltd.’s Mumbai Metro project, two people in the know told BloombergQuint on condition of anonymity, BloombergQuint reported. The restructuring plan involves extending the tenure of the Rs 2,200 crore in outstanding loans by two years, the people quoted above said. In addition, lenders will likely agree to a cut in interest rates to around 9 percent from over 11 percent currently, which will help the metro project repay its dues on time, the people said.
A unit of Reliance Communications Ltd., tycoon Anil Ambani’s distressed telecom firm, is seeking an extension from holders of its dollar-denominated bonds maturing Aug. 1, the company’s spokesman said, Bloomberg News reported. Global Cloud Xchange is in discussions with holders of its 7% $350 million notes for a deal that would provide the issuer more time to discuss options on the maturity of the senior secured notes, the spokesman said in a statement.
India’s JSW Steel Ltd said a weaker steel market hit by falling global demand and a local slowdown could impact the turnaround time for its newly acquired Monnet Ispat assets, but its chairman played down any substantial impact on financials, Reuters reported. “It might be a little bit affected,” Sajjan Jindal, co-chair of India’s biggest steel company by local capacity, said in Mumbai on Thursday. “We have always maintained it may take about two years to turn around and I think we will still try to do it within two years,” he said on the sidelines of his company’s annual meeting.
The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), Chennai Bench, has ordered initiation of insolvency proceedings against L&T Halol - Shamlaji Tollway Ltd (L&T Halol) on a petition filed by Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC), which alleged that the company had defaulted in repayment of ₹76.68 crore as on December 27, 2018, The Hindu Business Line reported.
In a significant move, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) has tightened norms governing resolution professionals wherein restrictions will also be in place for their relatives from taking up employment after completion of a resolution process, The Economic Times reported. Insolvency resolution professionals would be barred from having employment when they are in possession of authorisation to take up work under the insolvency law.
A JPMorgan Chase & Co. unit violated India’s foreign investment rules and helped property developer Amrapali Group divert funds from realty projects, the nation’s Supreme Court said in a ruling and ordered an investigation, Bloomberg News reported. The court on Tuesday ordered the federal anti-money laundering agency to investigate Amrapali, based in Noida, near New Delhi, for diverting funds overseas with the help of JPMorgan and others.