The dedicated bankruptcy court has approved Taguda revival plan for BSE-listed Ushdev International. The company, featuring in the central bank’s second list of large defaulters, was referred for mandatory resolution at the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).
Singapore-based Taguda (TPL) is promoted by Sagar Zaveri, who comes from the Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri family. The target company had admitted liabilities of ₹4,205 crore and TPL’s resolution plan proposed ₹227 crore for its revival.
“It is seen that 91.06% of the CoC (Committee of Creditors) have taken a commercial decision to approve the said resolution plan,” the NCLT said in its order of February 3, giving its approval. The liquidation value of the company is approximately ₹71.28 crore and the resolution plan provides for payment of ₹227 crore. Out of the resolution amount, ₹225.14 crore will be paid upfront to financial creditors.
Mumbai-based Ushdev is primarily engaged in metals trading with a presence in ferrous – flat and long products. It also deals in non-ferrous metals – copper, aluminium, zinc, brass and nickel.
Originally, the Mumbai NCLT had admitted a petition filed by SBI in May 2018 and had appointed Subodh Kumar Agrawal as the company’s resolution professional.
As per the rules, with the approval of the resolution plan by the NCLT, until the Final Settlement Date (Interim Period), the company and lenders will constitute a monitoring agency for supervision of the implementation of this plan and for the day-to-day operations and management of the company.
The company was founded by the late Vijay Gupta, who began as a commission agent and later diversified to become a power generator and steel trader. Even while the company is under NCLT, during FY21, it had reported revenues of ₹15.37 crore and a net profit of ₹11.61 crore. The successful bidder Taguda Pte has consolidated an annual turnover of approximately $722 million and net assets of approximately $84 million.
Apart from Taguda Pte, the lenders had also received two more revival plans from Anika Industries Pvt Ltd and a consortium of UK-based Langley and the Netherlands-based fund house Bowline Capital Partners.
The company was part of the so-called second list of the stressed companies, referred for mandatory resolution by the central bank. In 2017, the central bank had referred 40 companies to NCLT in two tranches. They collectively owed ₹4.65 lakh crore to their lenders, almost half of the bad debt held by Indian banks in FY 2018.
