India

India's National Company Law Tribunal is pushing for the corporate insolvency resolution process for Jet Airways to be fast-tracked, citing the national importance of the matter, FlightGlobal reported. An order from the Mumbai bench of the court appointed Ashish Chhawchharia from Grant Thornton as the interim resolution professional (IRP) and declared a moratorium on any action be creditors to recover assets or lodge legal action against Jet. That moratorium will run until the completion of the insolvency process, the court approves a resolution plan, or a liquidation is ordered.

Realty developer Rustomjee Group has emerged as the sole bidder for Ariisto Developers, one of the first Mumbai based builders to be admitted by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for undertaking insolvency proceedings, said persons with direct knowledge of the development, the Economic Times reported. Total claims of lenders and other stakeholders, including lenders and operational creditors, stand at ₹2,500 crore.

India’s bankruptcy court, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), on Thursday accepted an insolvency petition against Jet Airways Ltd filed by its creditors as they attempt to recover some of their dues, Reuters reported. The insolvency process will allow lenders to sell the company as a whole or in parts, laying out a fixed timeline for a resolution around its future. Jet Airways, once India’s biggest private carrier, stopped flying in April after running out of cash, leaving thousands without jobs and pushing up air fares across the country.

Paragon Entertainment said on Thursday it did not have enough cash to run its operations or pay its dues and the company has decided to appoint administrators as soon as possible, while its top boss resigned, Reuters reported. The company, which has designed visitor attractions and experiences such as The Rolling Stones Exhibitionism at the Saatchi Gallery, said Chief Executive Damien Latham has resigned with immediate effect.

There’s yet another sign that India’s push to quickly expand its corporate debt market is faltering, as borrowers turn more to banks already struggling with one of the world’s worst bad debt ratios, Bloomberg News reported. India’s bond market remains small compared with other major economies, frustrating policy makers who champion it as a way of diffusing credit risks that have stacked up at banks.

State Bank of India (SBI), the lead banker to Jet Airways, on Tuesday filed an insolvency plea against the crisis-hit airline under Section 7 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code at the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), Mumbai, Business Standard reported. The tribunal will hear the plea on June 19. Ashish Chhawchharia of advisory firm Grant Thornton has been selected interim resolution professional by the SBI and one of the first tasks before him would be to gather details of the airline’s assets, aircraft, and employees on the rolls.

Jet Airways’ creditors said on Monday they plan to begin insolvency proceedings against the Indian airline in a last-ditch bid to find a buyer for the carrier or its remaining assets and recover some of what they are owed, Reuters reported. Once India’s biggest private carrier, Jet Airways stopped flying in April after running out of cash, leaving thousands without jobs and pushing up air fares across the country. “Lenders have decided to seek resolution under IBC since only a conditional bid was received,” they said in a statement, referring to India’s Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.

Just as India’s banks emerge from under a pile of bad loans to large energy, steel and other industrial companies, they are facing a new reckoning from the accelerating crisis in the country’s shadow banking sector, Bloomberg News reported. A year after a series of defaults by Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. forced the government to intervene and exposed weaknesses in the sector, the problems of India’s non-bank financial companies are entering a new phase. Other weaker lenders such as Dewan Housing Finance Corp. and Anil Ambani’s Reliance Capital Ltd.

India’s market regulator on Thursday ordered enhanced disclosure norms for credit rating agencies in an effort to increase transparency as the country reels under a slew of rating downgrades and defaults that have roiled debt and equity markets, Reuters reported. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) directed ratings agencies to formulate a uniform benchmark for the “probability of default” for each rating category and disclose that on their website for the ratings of long-term and short-term instruments.

New Reserve Bank of India norms on debt restructuring are likely to hit the profitability of already distressed non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), Livemint reported. The guidelines mandate lenders to keep additional provisioning of 20% if a resolution plan is not implemented within 210 days from the date of default and 35% if not implemented within 365 days of default. This move to include NBFCs along with banks in the circular comes at a time when these firms are reworking their growth strategy in the wake of a liquidity crisis.