India

Creditors of India’s bankrupt Essar Steel have accepted an offer from ArcelorMittal, the global steel giant said on Friday, in a major step towards its efforts to establish a meaningful presence in India, the Financial Times reported. The announcement came a day after Essar’s founding Ruia family offered to pay off the company’s entire outstanding debt of Rs543bn ($7.4bn), in a last-ditch attempt to pull the company out of the insolvency proceedings and halt the sale by creditors.

India’s second-oldest mutual fund has grown wary on non-banking financial companies after landmark defaults by IL&FS group fueled a cash crunch in the sector, Bloomberg News reported. Canara Robeco Asset Management is exercising caution on investments in short-term debt issued by NBFCs, as the fallout from Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. adds to strains caused by asset-liability mismatches. The company is a joint venture between Canara Bank and Netherlands-based asset manager Robeco.

India’s tight money conditions and fears of a contagion following a debt crisis at a local lender dented demand and put a muzzle on animal spirits in the world’s fastest-growing major economy, Bloomberg News reported. Economic growth in the July-September quarter may have retreated from the 8 percent plus expansion in the three months ended June as consumption cooled, a slew of high-frequency data show.

ScS Group said on Thursday it would stop selling its sofas and carpets at House of Fraser stores from January, saying the partnership had ceased to be beneficial since billionaire Mike Ashley bought the collapsed department store group, Reuters reported. Sports Direct, the British sportswear retailer controlled by Ashley, snapped up House of Fraser and its 58 stores from administrators for 90 million pounds ($116 million) in August.

Essar Steel India Ltd said its board and shareholders have offered to pay 543.89 billion rupees ($7.42 billion) to creditors to settle their claims, allowing the company to exit from a bankruptcy process, Reuters reported. The steelmaker, owned by the billionaire Ruia brothers, is one of a group of companies that are among India’s biggest debt defaulters that were pushed into the bankruptcy court last year after a central bank order that was aimed at clearing record bad loans at the country’s banks.

Lenders to Essar Steel India Ltd., the biggest mill being sold under the nation’s insolvency process, are voting to finalize a bid from ArcelorMittal, people with knowledge of the matter said. Arcelor has offered to make an upfront payment of about 395 billion rupees ($5.4 billion) to the banks, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private, Bloomberg News reported. The Luxembourg-based suitor later plans to pay the lenders about 25 billion rupees from Essar Steel’s retained earnings, according to the people.

India’s non-bank financial companies have had a tough few months amid the fallout from defaults by one of their own, conglomerate IL&FS group, Bloomberg News reported. The next few months also present a challenge to the NBFCs, which rely heavily on debt issued to the nation’s money market funds for short-term financing. The financiers must repay about 1.2 trillion rupees ($16.3 billion) of commercial paper in October-December, near a record 1.46 trillion rupees in August-October, according to data from Securities and Exchange Board of India. The timing isn’t ideal.

Jet Airways India Ltd. has approached banks for a moratorium on loans and asked for fresh funds to ease a cash crunch, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter, adding to signs the carrier is sliding deeper into trouble, Bloomberg News reported. The airline has already grounded about a dozen planes as part of a review of its network aimed at reducing unprofitable domestic routes, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public. The Mumbai-based carrier is also studying laying off more employees in non-core areas, the person said.

The board at India’s Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Ltd (IL&FS) said on Monday it has appointed two advisers for assisting them in its debt resolution exercise, Reuters reported. The newly appointed board has chosen advisory firms, Arpwood Capital and JM Financial Consultants, which will provide financial and transaction advisory as well as “undertake valuations across divestments and monetisation”, the company said.

India made the biggest dent in its foreign-exchange reserves in seven years as the central bank stepped up action to prop up Asia’s worst-performing currency. Reserves dropped by $5.14 billion in the seven days ended Oct. 12, the biggest weekly decline since November 2011, as the Reserve Bank of India sold dollars to shore up the rupee, helping it end a losing streak that extended for six weeks, Bloomberg News reported. Most of the drop in reserves seems to be because of accelerated central bank intervention, according to Kotak Securities Ltd.