Private equity funds KKR, Apollo Global Management, Oaktree Capital, SSG Asia, Piramal Capital, and AION Capital have shown their initial interest in debt-laden steel company Monnet IspatBSE 0.48 % and Energy, which has been admitted for recovery proceedings by India’s dedicated bankruptcy courts.
ET had reported back in July that the JSW Group might also put in a revised offer for Monnet, which put out a newspaper advertisement inviting potential strategic and financial partners to submit expressions of interest (EoIs). The advertisement was placed on Saturday and interested players can send in their EoIs until September 25.
An official in the know of matters related to the insolvency proceedings at the company said that before putting out the advertisement, it had received “informal expressions of interest” by the private-equity funds for the troubled company headed by Sandeep Jajodia. Formal EoIs can be expected to start flowing in from the coming week, he said.
“Apart from Indian companies such as JSW Steel and Tata Steel, we have also been approached informally by some private equity funds in Singapore and London,” the source told ET. The PE funds are likely to bid for stressed assets funds or special situation funds that buy bad loans from banks with exposure to such assets.
The company under the court-appointed Interim Resolution Practitioner (IRP) recently had its first meeting with the committee of creditors (CoC) in which the appointment of the IRP, Sumit Binani of Grant Thornton Advisory, was finalised for the next six months.
The company is now focusing on managing the operations and ensuring a strategy toward debt resolution, the official said.
An email sent to JSW Steel officials remained unanswered.
ET also tried to reach out to some of the funds. Of them, KKR and Oaktree Capital refused to comment, while emails sent out to SSG Asia and Apollo Global Management were not answered until the publication of this report.
Separately, Piramal Capital said that it did “not comment on market speculation.”
Source: Economic Times