The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has ordered an interim stay on a specific section of the Kolkata National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) order that had restricted any action by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) against the Srei group.
RBI had moved the appellate tribunal challenging the 30 December order that allowed Srei to skip repayments between 1 January and 30 June.
“In paragraph 34 of the impugned order following direction is stayed till pendency of this appeal,” the NCLAT said in an order on 31 March.
Paragraph 34 of the Kolkata NCLT order had said that “…all governmental or regulatory authorities shall be estopped from taking any coercive steps including reporting in any form and/or changing the account status of the company…”
To be sure, RBI is not the first institution to appeal against the Kolkata tribunal order. Rating agencies had appealed against a portion of the order that restricted them from considering non-payment of dues by the company as a default.
On 2 March, the appellate tribunal in New Delhi passed an interim order staying that part of the order till 5 April. Brickwork Ratings and several others had separately moved NCLAT against the NCLT order. Care Ratings recently downgraded Srei’s ratings for ₹29,240.3 crore debt to “default”, after this favourable NCLAT order in a separate case it filed along with others.
Meanwhile, debenture trustees Axis Trustee Services Ltd and Catalyst Trusteeship Ltd, which represent bondholders, have also jointly moved the tribunal against the order, which has impacted retail and institutional investors alike.
Kolkata-based Srei group was in December granted a moratorium on repayments by NCLT’s Kolkata bench from 1 January to 30 June. Under the scheme of arrangement, the company has proposed to make repayments to various categories of debenture holders over an extended period. Srei Equipment Finance Limited (SEFL) said on 31 March that it has received expressions of interest from overseas investors for a proposed round of capital infusion.
