India

India’s Adani Group said cash balances have improved and it sees no refinancing risks in the near term as the conglomerate took more steps to shore up its finances following a withering short seller attack last year, Bloomberg News reported. The group’s Ebitda, or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization rose more than 60% to 194.75 billion rupees ($2.3 billion) in the third quarter ended Dec. 31 with a bulk of that coming from the transport, infrastructure and energy units of the conglomerate. The group reported an Ebitda of $9.5 billion for the nine months to Dec. 31.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Wednesday told Byju’s to respond to two separate insolvency petitions filed against the troubled edtech firm by US lenders and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the Economic Times of India reported.

Debt-laden MEP Infrastructure Developers (MIDL) is seeking shareholder approval to bring in a new investor into the company, who will infuse ₹225 crore under the pre-packaged insolvency resolution process (PPIRP) that will allow the company to recoup the delays in payments and standardise the account which is currently classified as a non-performing asset, the Economic Times of India reported. The PPIRP was introduced for micro, small and medium enterprises or MSMEs in 2021.

The number of cases admitted for the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) has risen 18% year-on-year to 7,325 as of December 2023, from 6,199 cases as of December 2022, according to the latest data from the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI), the Financial Express reported. However, there has been a sequential decline in new admissions for the CIRP, with 244 cases being admitted in the third quarter of the current fiscal year, down from 250 cases in the second quarter.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has ordered initiation of corporate insolvency resolution process against real estate special purpose vehicle (SPV) Sankalp Siddhi Developers, the Economic Times of India reported. The SPV was promoted by Ahuja Hive, now known as Hive Carbon-Zero Developers, for the development of a project in Mumbai's Jogeshwari suburb, and has been controlled and managed by Chinese group Fosun since 2022.

Indian airline Go First has received two financial bids as part of its bankruptcy process, two bankers who attended a meeting of the airline's creditors said on Saturday, the Hindustan Times reported. Managing director of Spicejet Ajay Singh, along with Busy Bee Airways, jointly submitted a bid of 16 billion rupees ($193.10 million) for the airline. Another financial bid was submitted by Sharjah-based Sky One Airways, but its amount wasn't disclosed.

The bankruptcy court in Mumbai is likely to pronounce its ruling on Tuesday in an application filed by the administrator of Reliance Capital Ltd to approve the company’s acquisition by IndusInd International Holdings Ltd through the insolvency resolution process, the Economic Times of India reported. The division bench of Justice Virendra Singh Bisht and a technical member Prabhat Kumar is expected to pronounce its ruling on the approval plan of the Hinduja group-owned IndusInd International Holdings.

Indian central bank officials rejected the International Monetary Fund’s view that government debt could exceed the size of the economy, predicting a more rapid easing in the debt ratio than the Washington, D.C.-based lender estimates, Bloomberg News reported. General government debt — which is the combined borrowing of the central government and the states — can be reduced to 73.4% of gross domestic product by 2030-31, nearly 5 percentage points below the IMF’s projected trajectory of 78.2% for the period, central bank officials led by Deputy Governor Michael Patra wrote in a paper.

Lenders to large stressed firms, with a default of at least ₹ 1,000 crore each, have taken smaller haircuts under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) than those with exposure to smaller firms, showed the data sourced from the bankruptcy regulator, the Economic Times of India reported. Creditors recovered 32.9% of their admitted claims from 138 large stressed firms until December 2023 since the IBC came into being in late 2016, as per the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India data.

India’s market regulator has found a hole of more than $240 million in the accounts of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd., dealing another blow to the embattled media firm less than a month after its merger with Sony Group Corp’s local unit collapsed, Bloomberg News reported. As part of its investigation into the Zee founders, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, or Sebi, found that about 20 billion rupees ($241 million) may have been diverted from the company. That’s roughly ten times of what was initially estimated by Sebi investigators.