Faced with the task of clearing debts of over Rs 33,000 crore, the highest bid received for RCom’s assets is reportedly Rs 9,500 crore from Bharti Airtel. Interestingly, some of the other companies which were expected to submit their bids did not do so, despite the extension in the deadline for submitting the bids. Particularly, Reliance Jio was the one which asked for the deadline to be extended but seems to have lost interest subsequently.
While Bharti Airtel submitted conditional bids for RCom’s assets which include spectrum, mobile towers and optical fibre, two other companies, VFSI Holdings Pte Ltd and UV Asset Reconstruction Company Limited have also reportedly submitted their bids.
As reported earlier, RCom is now at the National Company Law Tribunal, NCLT, for insolvency resolution. Of the total demands of Rs 49,000 crore put up by the creditors, only Rs 33,000 crore stand identified /acknowledged. The company was hoping that its three different types of assets, namely, spectrum holding of 122Mhz, tower and fibre infrastructure and the data centres would fetch Rs 14,000 crore, Rs 10,000 crore and Rs 4,000 crore respectively. This compares better with the debts to be cleared. If the highest bid itself is only Rs 9,500 crore, the creditors will have to take a huge haircut.
The Committee of Creditors, CoC is said to meet on Monday, December 2 to consider the bids. The latest report on this suggests Airtel’s bids cover all these assets, possibly except the data centres. The data centre was expected to be targeted by a company I Squared Capital, but it seems this company too did not submit its bid for it.
The resolution professional, RP will find it difficult to complete the resolution process by January 10, 2020, the time given by the NCLT, if the bidding process were to be redone. It will depend on what the CoC decides after opening the bids on Monday.
The company’s earlier attempts to sell its assets before being referred to the NCLT had also not borne any fruits. Reliance Industries run by elder brother Mukesh Ambani was willing to buy the assets; however, it backed off when the government wanted a commitment that RCom’s past liabilities would also have to be borne by it. It could be a crucial meeting of the CoC on Monday for RCom.