India

Indian stressed-asset deals will increase this year as bad loans rise and reforms pushed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government start to bear fruit, according to the nation’s top investment banker, Bloomberg News reported. Interest will come from both strategic buyers and private equity firms, said Vishal Kampani, managing director of JM Financial Ltd., the former joint venture partner of Morgan Stanley in India. JM Financial was the No.

Tata steelworkers in the UK have voted to accept the closure of their £15bn pension fund, a historic sacrifice that brings the industry closer to resolving the crisis in British steel, the Financial Times reported. Thousands of trade union members backed a rescue package that Tata Steel offered its British operation, whose future came under threat after the Indian group threatened to quit the country last March. A key condition of the plan — aimed at saving thousands of jobs and maintaining production — was shutting the British Steel Pension Scheme to further contributions.

For several weeks near the end of last year, Indian banks were besieged by snaking queues of customers waiting to deposit banknotes that had suddenly been declared obsolete by the government, the Financial Times reported. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dramatic demonetisation helped drive a Rs5.1tn ($76bn) increase in bank deposits in the final three months of last year — giving the sector a burst of cheap funding and pushing millions of Indians towards the formal banking sector.

Investors expecting a deal this year in Tata Steel's talks to merge its European assets with Germany's Thyssenkrupp risk disappointment, given complications associated with the Indian-owned firm's British pension scheme. Tata and Thyssenkrupp shares have firmed on hopes a merger would trigger European steel capacity cuts, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Investors expecting a deal this year in Tata Steel's talks to merge its European assets with Germany's Thyssenkrupp risk disappointment, given complications associated with the Indian-owned firm's British pension scheme. Tata and Thyssenkrupp shares have firmed on hopes a merger would trigger European steel capacity cuts, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

India's central bank deputy governor on Wednesday joined the debate over creating a so-called "bad bank" to handle record sour assets in the nation's banks, saying it could help if "designed properly". Banks in India had record stressed loans of $133 billion, or 12.34 percent of their total loans, as of last September, Reuters reported. About two dozen state-owned lenders, which own nearly 70 percent of India's banking assets, have an even higher stressed-loan ratio of 15.88 percent, according to data compiled by India's central bank. In its economic survey released on Jan.

Indian banks could unlock as much as 650 billion rupees ($9.6 billion) worth of security receipts they hold, as the South Asian nation proposes to allow listing of the instruments the lenders received for selling delinquent debt, Bloomberg News reported.

Vijay Mallya, the Indian liquor and aviation tycoon, was charged on Tuesday with conspiracy and fraud connected to a 9 billion rupee ($132 million) loan granted by a government-owned bank, a spokesman for India's Central Bureau of Investigation said, Reuters reported. The head of the Force India Formula One team and a former owner of an Indian Premier League cricket team, one-time billionaire Mallya moved to Britain last March after being pursued in courts by banks seeking to recover about $1.4 billion the Indian authorities claim is owed by his Kingfisher airline.

Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction Co. (ARC) Ltd is planning to file an insolvency case against Bharati Defence and Infrastructure Ltd in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to pre-empt winding-up petitions by unsecured creditors, said two people familiar with the matter, including a senior official at the ARC. Edelweiss’s move is in response to the dissolution of the Board for Industrial and Financial Restructuring, which makes Bharati vulnerable to winding-up petitions from unsecured lenders. “Under BIFR, a firm remains protected against any legal proceedings.

India lowered its borrowing plan for the year ending March 31 by 4.2%, in a sign that the government’s crackdown on tax evaders is helping to increase New Delhi’s coffers, The Wall Street Journal reported. The government says it plans to cut the amount it borrows by 180 billion rupees ($2.64 billion) from its earlier estimate of about 4.25 trillion rupees. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November announced a plan to withdraw and replace 500- and 1,000-rupee notes in an effort to cut tax evasion, terrorism and government corruption.