India

India’s top court moved on Monday to protect buyers of homes sold by builder Jaypee Infratech, which is being pursued in a bankruptcy court over unpaid loans, telling its parent Jaiprakash Associates to deposit 20 billion rupees ($313 million) with it by Oct. 27, Reuters reported. Many buyers of apartments in a mega township project being built by Jaypee Infratech on the outskirts of New Delhi have paid for them but have yet to take possession. They filed a petition with the court because of worries they would lose their money.

Tata Steel has ditched its £15bn UK pension fund after receiving the green light from regulators, boosting the prospects of the Port Talbot steelworks. The company said it had received approval from the Pensions Regulator and that it had separated the British Steel Pension Scheme from its UK business. Tata had claimed that the retirement fund was a financial drag that threatened to pull the country’s largest steelmaker into insolvency, throwing thousands of jobs and a bedrock industry into doubt, the Financial Times reported.

Overseas fund managers and companies are tracking India’s efforts to force its biggest defaulters into insolvency proceedings as interest in buying distressed assets grows, according to investment bank Moelis & Co. A dozen companies in sectors including steel, power and construction may become buyout targets after the Reserve Bank of India ordered lenders to take them to insolvency court and set in motion a timeline for them to devise a restructuring plan or face liquidation, Bloomberg News reported.

ICICI Bank Ltd, a major lender to Unimark Remedies Ltd, is in talks with Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction Co. (ARC) Ltd to sell its loans, according to two people aware of the development. A couple of other ARCs, including Multiples ARC Pvt. Ltd, have also evinced interested in Mumbai-based Unimark but the discussions were unsuccessful, one of the two people said, requesting anonymity. The discussions with Edelweiss ARC is at a preliminary stage, the second person said on condition of anonymity.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has appointed an interim insolvency professional for SmartCity (Kochi) Infrastructure, after admitting a payment default claim by a creditor against the joint venture between the Kerala government and Dubai's Tecom Investments. The Kerala government holds a 16% stake in the IT special economic zone, with Dubai Holding's Tecom unit owning the rest. The first phase commenced operations last year and the project is expected to become fully operational by 2020. Kochi Smart City, Kerala's signature IT project, is coming up on 246 acres of land.

India is taking a series of aggressive steps to reduce the mountain of bad debts weighing down its banks and threatening to derail the world’s fastest-growing large economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. India’s parliament last week passed a law empowering its central bank to force some of the country’s largest companies into bankruptcy proceedings. The move follows last year’s overhaul of the bankruptcy code, another attempt to make it faster for creditors to get their money back in a country notorious for drawn-out insolvency proceedings.

The National Company Law Tribunal-appointed Interim Resolution Professional (IRP) Anuj Jain on Wednesday met with the chief executive officer and senior officials of the Yamuna Expressway authority to discuss issues pertaining to insolvency proceedings against Jaypee Infratech, the Hindustan Times reported. The meeting took place at the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority’s (YEIDA) office in Greater Noida.

Tata Steel Ltd. and the trustee of the British Steel Pension Scheme have agreed to terms to separate the plan from the Indian steelmaker’s U.K. unit, eliminating the last hurdle for it to proceed with a strategy to place European operations into a joint venture, Bloomberg News reported. The Mumbai-based company has signed the regulated apportionment arrangement with the pension trustee and the terms are expected to take effect in a month’s time, the trustee said in a statement Friday.

Suzlon Energy Ltd. reported its lowest quarterly profit in a year as India’s support for auction mechanism to build wind energy projects slowed orders, Bloomberg News reported. The profit of 490.8 million rupees ($7.65 million) during the usually quiet fiscal first quarter compared with a loss of 2.6 billion rupees in the year-ago period, according to a filing to the Indian stock exchange late Friday. The previous three quarters each provided profit over 2 billion rupees.

Nearly six months after his turbulent elevation to run India’s biggest conglomerate, Natarajan Chandrasekaran is assembling a team of dealmakers to refocus some of the group’s biggest businesses, expand its financial services and consumer businesses and sell or merge dozens of smaller units, according to interviews with senior executives.