A bankruptcy court order approving Haldia Petrochemicals’ proposal to acquire Coastal Oil & Gas Infrastructure Pvt Ltd at just Rs 1 crore above the liquidation value has again brought to the fore the concerns raised by a Mumbai tribunal, which had questioned the confidentiality of valuation reports in the Videocon resolution case. Purnendu Chatterjee-promoted Haldia Petrochemicals’ proposal is also just 3% of the admitted claims of Coastal Oil.
Last week, the Amravati bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) approved Haldia Petrochemicals’ resolution plan of Rs 37.50 crore for Coastal Oil. The liquidation value was Rs 36.46 crore.
The resolution professional of unlisted Coastal Oil had admitted Rs 1,245 crore of claims, which included Rs 1,198 crore from financial creditors and the balance from trade creditors and employees.
In response to a question by the judge to Coastal Oil’s RP on the lower recovery, he responded that the offer was better than the liquidation value, according to the NCLT order.
Resolution professional Sai Ramesh Kanuparthi and Haldia Petrochemicals did not respond to ET’s emailed queries till press time Wednesday.
Coastal Oil is a special purpose company set up by Abir Infrastructure Pvt Ltd to construct, operate and maintain a crude oil terminal on Nagarjuna Oil Corp Ltd’s refinery premises. In October last year, the parent company, Abir Infrastructure, which too was going insolvency proceedings was sold to Srei Multiple Assets Investment Trust for Rs 11.1 crore, much below the liquidation value of Rs 37.25 crore, according to an order on the NCLT website. Abir’s total admitted claims stood at Rs 1,339 crore and the recovery was less than 1%. State Bank of India was the largest lender with Rs 283 crore admitted claims, followed by Srei Equipment Finance at Rs 120 crore, according to disclosures on Abir’s website.
Earlier, the NCLT judge in Mumbai had frowned upon a resolution proposal for Videocon Industries and its 12 units, which was marginally above liquidation value and approved by 95% of its lenders. Billionaire Anil Agarwal-promoted Twin Star Technologies offered Rs 2,962 crore, marginally above the Rs 2,568 crore liquidation value. Recovery for Videocon’s lenders was 4.15%. Lenders restarted Videocon’s sale process after the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal observed that Twin Star’s plan was not compliant with the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.
The NCLT order on Coastal Oil shows that 68.68% of lenders voted in favour of Haldia Petrochemicals’ plan on January 20.
