With Uday Kotak At Helm, Resolution Plans For All 302 Entities Ready Says IL&FS

A year after the crisis in the lending major IL&FS came to light and a new board with Uday Kotak as its Chairman was installed, the lending major on Tuesday (1 October) said that the resolution plans for all its 302 entities are ready and so far debt of Rs 36,400 crore have been addressed.

In a presentation, IL&FS said that three entities with a total debt of Rs 5,100 crore have been successfully restructured. The group and its entities have a total external debt of Rs 94,216 crore.

It said that discussions on restructuring ILFS Energy and Tamilnadu Power Company (ITPCL) with a debt of Rs 8,000 crore are at an advanced stage while discussions for three other entities with a total debt Rs 2,400 crore are in progress.

Speaking to the media here on the completion of one year of the new board, the Non-Executive Chairman of IL&FS said that the board is confident on restructuring or resolving 50 per cent of the total debt.

"We should be able to recover, restructure and/or resolve... which includes green companies as well... We believe that we should be above the 50 per cent mark... We are quite confident that we should cross 50 per cent based on our best estimates and judgements," he said.

The public process has been launched for 65 entities including 54 domestic and 11 international entities and the public process for 11 others will be launched soon.

"Claims management process for 70 entities covering 86 per cent of external debt is in progress (in-line with insolvency and bankruptcy process)," the IL&FS presentation said.

The sale of real estate assets with an estimated value of Rs 3,000-3,500 crore is also in progress.

Regarding the challenges in the asset monetisation process, the presentation said that a large number of simultaneous processes, lack of centralized database, delay in audited accounts are among the major challenges. It also described the external economic environment as a challenge.

It also mentioned the 'coercive" creditor actions such as auto-debit, non-creation of FDs in contravention of court orders and said that formal approval for resolution framework is awaited.

It said that the new board has navigated through complexity and developed a resolution plan for all 302 entities and the going concern status has been maintained to preserve value for all stakeholders. The board has formulated a unique resolution framework to balance the interests of stakeholders, it added.

IL&FS further said that the board is continuously evaluating options and actively considering alternatives such as InvIT for value maximisation.

The IL&FS board is targeting to achieve resolution for a significant quantum of addressable debt by March 2020, the presentation said.

On Tuesday, the government extended Kotak's term on the board of the crisis-hit IL&FS by one year, till 2 October, 2020.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)