The Supreme Court's ruling in the BPSL case exposes deep flaws in the IBC's institutional framework and raises concern about judicial overreach, notes Rajeswari Sengupta.
In a significant development, the Supreme Court on Thursday recalled its controversial May 2 verdict that had ordered liquidation of Bhushan Power & Steel Limited (BPSL) while setting aside a resolution plan of JSW Steel Limited for the ailing firm. A bench comprising Chief Justice B R Gavai and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma observed that the May 2 judgment, authored by Justice Bela M Trivedi, since retired, did not "correctly consider the legal position as has been laid down in the catena of judgments".
Stung by the crisis arising out of the Syndicate Bank bribery case, lenders have gone into a fire-fighting mode to avoid fresh bad loans from their exposure to Bhushan Steel, one of the most indebted steel companies in the country.
Pursuit of raw material had landed Bhushan Steel in the coal block allocation scam.
Firm terms lenders' move to appoint monitoring agency 'unwarranted'.
LIC, ICICI Bank, PNB to have nominees on board; firm asked to sell non-core assets.
State Bank of India's push among fellow bankers to appoint an external agency to run debt-heavy Bhushan Steel might not be smooth sailing.
West Bengal, which has seen many violent protests against land acquisition in the country, is now set to get another exemplary rehabilitation package for land-losers. After the free shares by JSW Bengal Steel, now Bhushan Steel is going one step ahead to give free land to land-losers as a part of its rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) package. Sources said the R&R package has been submitted to the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC).
The officers did not arrest Neeraj Singhal despite CBI Director Ranjit Sinha's orders.
The judge had on Wednesday dismissed the anticipatory bail plea of Singal.
Earlier, a special CBI court had issued non-bailable warrants against Neeraj Singal, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Bhushan Steel Ltd, and Purushotam Totlani, an alleged middleman, in connection with the Syndicate Bank bribery case.
'When you look at reviving private sector capex, I don't think there's a better story than steel.'
Tata Steel has built an iron ore chest of nearly 600 million tonnes (mt) and will look for more as it prepares for life beyond 2030 when its legacy captive mines come up for auction. The lease for four of its existing iron ore mines -- Joda East, Noamundi, Katamati, and Khondbond -- that feed the domestic operation with low-cost iron ore is going to expire in 2030, following changes in mining regulations. The year will also coincide with Tata Steel's ambitious target of doubling steelmaking capacity in India to 40 mt, increasing the need for iron ore. The company is pushing the pedal to ensure that it has enough resources to meet enhanced needs.
ArcelorMittal could be interested in Bhushan Steel or Essar Steel, two of the five steel companies referred by RBI for insolvency proceedings.
On June 30, mining and metals giant Vedanta, announced that it had decided to initiate a strategic review of its steel and steel-making raw material businesses. The review would begin immediately and evaluate a broad range of options, including but not limited to a potential strategic sale of some or all of the steel businesses, the company said in its stock exchange filing. The signs have been there - approaches had been made to steel players over the past year. Last December, Anil Agarwal, chairman Vedanta group, told Business Standard that the steel plant capacity was about 3 million tonnes (mt).
The steelmaker's India basket grew after Tata Steel completed its acquisition of Bhushan Steel under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code process and its subsidiary, Tata Sponge, acquired Usha Martin.
With the stock market entering a bull phase, many believe the Singals can bring in the much-needed equity capital and reduce their debt.
The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) got a leg-up with Tata Steel's acquisition of Bhushan Steel, the first big case to be resolved. Tata Steel CEO & MD T V Narendran tells Ishita Ayan Dutt how this deal moved so quickly while others are still mired in controversies.
He supervised and handled several major big ticket insolvency cases that includes Essar Steel, Bhushan Power & Steel, Bhushan Steel, Jaypee Infratech, ElectroSteel Steel, Binani Cement, Reliance Communications.
SBI Caps readies plan, identifies 4 assets; bankers say there are enough bidders.
While the collapse of a large financial intermediary can wreak havoc on the system because of the interconnectivity, a large business conglomerate too can play spoilsport if the banks have too much exposure to the entity, explains Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The Inter-Ministerial Group on coal blocks on Saturday decided to recommend cancellation of two mines awarded to Bhushan Steel and SKS Ispat & Power, and forfeiture of bank guarantees for two other blocks.
At the NSE, it tumbled 8.45 per cent to Rs 132.10.
Once Bhushan Steel is into its fold, Tata Steel will increase its capacity from 12.7 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) to 18.3 mtpa
The haircut for major banks stands at 52 per cent, if the dues of Jaypee Infrastructure, Lanco Infrastructure and Era Infrastructure are kept out of the calculation.
Apart from being the most successful cases under the IBC, Bhushan Steel and Essar Steel are among the best steel assets in the country. They also ended up helping their lenders get back a significant chunk of the money while allowing Tata Steel to consolidate its position and giving the world's two largest steel makers - ArcelorMittal and Nippon Steel - a strong foothold in India. A significant contrast was the pace at which these two cases were resolved under the bankruptcy code. In the annals of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), Essar Steel may go down in history as the most noticeable resolution with the world's largest steelmaker, ArcelorMittal, and the incumbent, Ruia family, locked in an intense battle spanning more than two years and ultimately resulting in full recovery of the principal amount for the financial creditors.
Essar group, Bhushan Steel and JSW group likely to be impacted by changes
The total admitted claim of financial creditors of these 88 companies stood at Rs 1.3 trillion, of which they recovered Rs 65,635 crore.
At least three steel companies-JSW Steel, Jindal Stainless and Bhushan Steel-have decided to wait for the financial storm to pass before they take up their expansion plans. Ministry may not achieve target to cross 100 MT output by 2012.
The Tatas have the know-how to quickly close deals which can otherwise get caught in legal wrangle. In 2018, on the day the National Company Law Tribunal declared Tata Steel as the winner of the bid for bankrupt Bhushan Steel, Bhushan promoter Neeraj Singhal was planning to file for a stay order. He did get the case listed for the following day, but the judge did not admit it, deferring it until the following week. The Tatas used the narrow window of 48 hours to close the deal and take control of the company.
The Essar group, Jindal Steel and Power, Monnet Ispat, Bhushan Steel and the Avantha group have been asked to close deals by March-end.
Forest land measuring 1838.79 hectares in Odisha has been diverted for 15 industrial projects in the state between 2004 and 2013.
As industrialist Vijay Mallya fights his wilful defaulter tag, former CAG Vinod Rai has said Kingfisher Airlines' loan default is just a "trickle" and the overall problem of huge bad loans at public sector banks can be blamed on 'cronies' using connections to borrow money.
Even as lenders are getting ready to send more companies to bankruptcy courts from this week, several old cases are still awaiting resolution with no clarity on the completion of the process. This includes some high profile cases from the first list of 40 companies including Videocon Industries, Bhushan Power and Steel and Lavasa Corporation, sent by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for resolution. The delay is mainly due to litigation and late clarifications by various government agencies including the Reserve Bank of India and litigation by the Enforcement Directorate.
Those involved in the discussions say the guidelines for selection of bidders in insolvency cases need to be transparent, otherwise anyone who loses out could take legal recourse, leading to wastage of time and derailing the whole process.
The group began to outperform the broader market only with the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 while earlier it was largely keeping pace with the Sensex. The group's market cap is up 164.4 per cent since the end of March 2020 against a 105 per cent rally in the Sensex.
PE funds say they have enough money to buy two or three of the indebted companies and the issue is not cash but the management bandwidth to turn them around.
Earnings growth in the early-bird sample has been driven by banks and iron & steel companies.
Top companies have grabbed a bigger pie of their sectors in the pandemic period, leading to a further rise in market concentration in many industries as measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). The HHI score, which indicates competitive intensity in an industry (or a lack of it), reached a new high in FY21 as bigger firms raised their revenue market shares either organically or through mergers and acquisitions. A higher HHI score indicates a rise in market concentration in favour of a few firms while a lower score means that the industry's revenue is more evenly divided among many companies
JSW Steel, Tata Steel, Steel Authority of India, Bhushan Steel, Essar Steel, Jindal Steel & Power, and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam are among the top producers of the alloy in the domestic market
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