Binani Cement Ltd.’s committee of creditors were today directed by the National Company Law Tribunal to consider a revised offer from UltraTech Cement Ltd, Bloomberg Quint reported. The Kolkata bench of the NCLT asked UltraTech to place a fresh bid before Binani Cement’s resolution professional in three days and extended the resolution process till June 24. The 270-day period for Binani Cement’s insolvency process would have ended in April, had the NCLT not provided this extension. The tribunal also allowed Dalmia Group to match UltraTech’s revised offer, if it so chooses.

The observations and conclusions in the Essar Steel Ltd. and Bhushan Power & Steel Ltd. insolvency cases are likely to impact the insolvency process considerably, Bloomberg Quint reported. The Delhi and Ahmedabad benches of the National Company Law Tribunal have pointed out lapses in the process carried out by the resolution professionals and the committee of creditors. On those grounds, the NCLT allowed Numetal and ArcelorMittal’s bid to be considered for Essar Steel and Liberty House’s bid for Bhushan Power.

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) has invited comments from public on the broad range of regulations it has already notified under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), as it seeks to ‘crowdsource’ ideas to further strengthen the ecosystem. The comments from the stakeholders, received between April 30 and December 31, will be processed together and following the due process, regulations will be amended to the extent considered necessary, the IBBI said.

Lenders to Essar Steel Ltd. have decided to assess bids submitted by Numetal Mauritius and ArcelorMittal India on their individual merit, Bloomberg News reported. The committee of creditors will not challenge an order passed by the National Company Law Tribunal last week, directing them to review bids submitted by the two companies. The CoC decision was taken at the end of deliberations that spanned over two days as lenders assessed the tribunal’s order, three people in the know told BloombergQuint on the condition of anonymity.

India’s revamped bankruptcy process is in full swing and investors from Blackstone Group LP to Oaktree Capital Group LLC are salivating over an estimated $210 billion of stressed assets that are up for grabs, Bloomberg News reported. But the courtrooms handling the thousands of bankruptcies are lacking a key component: Judges. Ten benches with a combined 26 judges and technical staff are hearing more than 2,500 insolvency cases, the latest official data show. Based on the workload a year ago, researchers estimated India needs about 80 benches over five years.

Sajjan Jindal-controlled JSW Steel has written to the committee of creditors (CoC) of Essar Steel on inviting fresh bids for the bankrupt firm, Business Standard reported. This has come ahead of the meeting of the CoC on Tuesday. About a month ago, JSW Steel had written to the committee, expressing its interest in taking part in bidding for Essar Steel. However, the CoC had decided not to invite fresh bids owing to time constraints.

Want to screw up a good law? Just try to make it a great one. That's what India did last November when it added a number of restrictions on who could bid for assets in a bankruptcy. The idea of the new regulations was to make it hard for errant owners to regain control of businesses without first settling their dues. But the morality was legal overkill; and that's now evident in the farce that the insolvency of Essar Steel India Ltd. has become, Bloomberg News reported in a commentary.

To many economists, the solution to India’s bad-loan crisis appears as obvious as the problem: Privatize state-owned banks, which have racked up billions more in soured loans and performed much worse than their private-sector counterparts. Yet, unless the government first strengthens its ability to supervise all banks, public and private, selling some of them off will be slim guarantee against another crisis, a Bloomberg View reported. One can understand the urge to privatize. A long-mooted bankruptcy law finally passed last year allows any single creditor to initiate the bankruptcy process.

Vedanta Ltd said on Tuesday it got approval from India's designated court for bankruptcy cases to acquire Electrosteel Steels Ltd. Electrosteel is the first to get approval from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), among a dozen of the country's biggest loan defaulters which were pushed to bankruptcy proceedings last year, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. A Vedanta Ltd unit will buy debt-ridden Electrosteel for 18.05 billion rupees ($274.96 million) and provide additional funds worth 35.15 billion rupees, the company said in a statement.

Oaktree Capital Group LLC, one of the world’s largest distressed debt investors, is eyeing India as a key market as the nation overhauls its bankruptcy rules and banks battle with a historic bad debt clean-up, Bloomberg News reported. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see India as another engine of growth maybe in the next three to five years,” said Jay Wintrob, chief executive officer at the Los Angeles-based firm, in an interview in Hong Kong.