The National Company Law Tribunal, Mumbai, granted interim relief to Torrent Investments on Tuesday, by directing the administrator of bankrupt Reliance Capital Ltd not to present the revised offer Hinduja group made past the auction deadline to the lenders until the next hearing date.
Torrent Investments, which emerged as the top bidder in the auction process with an offer of ₹8,640 crore for Reliance Capital (RCap), approached the bankruptcy court to restrain lenders from considering Hinduja’s upgraded offer of ₹9,000 crore, arguing that accepting late offers violated the norms for the insolvency resolution process.
The tribunal will take up the matter for further hearing next week.
In the electronic auction for Reliance Capital on 21 December, the Hinduja group entity IndusInd International Holdings was placed second, with an offer of ₹8,110 crore. However, in its revised offer, the Hinduja group offered significantly higher upfront cash than Torrent, Mint reported on 24 December.
In a committee of creditors’ meeting on Tuesday, the lenders and the advisers reviewed the bids received by the administrator for Reliance Capital but did not take any decisions as the matter was under litigation.
Hinduja’s improved bid caught the RCap lenders by surprise as the e-auction process had concluded.
The auction process for Reliance Capital has been marked by several twists and turns, with two frontrunners—Oaktree and the Cosmea-Piramal consortium—withdrawing from the race at the last minute.
Reliance Capital is the third major non-banking financial firm to have bankruptcy proceedings initiated against it by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, or IBC, along with Srei Group and Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd (DHFL).
In November 2021, the Reserve Bank referred Reliance Capital for bankruptcy resolution after it defaulted on bonds worth ₹24,000 crore. Subsequently, Nageswara Rao Y. was hired as the administrator for the corporate insolvency resolution process of the firm.
Last February, the administrator for Reliance Capital invited expressions of interest (EoIs) for the stressed lender. Among the 55 firms that submitted EoIs, 14 submitted non-binding bids by August. Finally, only four —Hindujas, Torrent, Cosmea-Piramal consortium and Oaktree Capital—submitted final bids in December. Since the bids submitted were below liquidation value, the committee of creditors held an e-auction in which bidders were asked to revise bid prices.
