The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has upheld Doha Bank’s petition, seeking 100% recovery for the financial creditors of Reliance Communications’ (RCom) tower unit Reliance Infratel, amounting to Rs.3,515 crore. The NCLT’s decision will be a big boost for the tower unit’s lenders whose fate is not hinged on RCom’s resolution plans.
Under the plan approved by NCLT, lenders may recover less than Rs 4000 crore through the resolution plan of Reliance Infratel. Some 13 of the major lenders of RITL had claimed Rs 12,687.65 crore of which Rs 9,665.07 crore was admitted.
Infratel which holds 43,000 towers and 1,72,000 km of fibre and Reliance Telecom, which mainly houses fibre, are the two units of RCom that went bust along with their parent company.
Last December, the dedicated insolvency court had given its nod to Reliance Infratel’s (RITL) resolution plan, thereby paving way for Reliance Jio Infocomm (Jio) to pick up the tower and fibre assets of this bankrupt company after an over 20-month long insolvency process.
However, the court had then said that resolution plan distribution depended on Doha Bank’s intervening application. Doha Bank’s contention was that the direct lenders of Reliance Infratel had a first right over the proceeds from the company’s resolution plan, and not the corporate guarantee holders of RCom and its other unit Reliance Telecom (RTL).
As per the plan submitted in NCLT, Infratel’s lenders were set to take more than a 60% haircut through the asset monetisation plan of this tower company. Meanwhile RCom’s resolution plan – though cleared by lenders in last March – is yet to get the NCLT approval. RITL’s plan was also cleared by lenders along with RCom’s, back in March.
