Adani Finserve, ICICI Lombard, Tata AIG, HDFC Ergo, and Nippon Life Insurance are among the 54 firms that have expressed interest to bid for the debt-ridden Reliance Capital, promoted by the Anil Ambani Group, sources told PTI.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on November 29, 2021, had superseded the board of Reliance Capital for payment defaults and serious governance issues.
This is the third large non-banking financial company (NBFC) after Srei Group NBFC and Dewan Housing Finance Corporation (DHFL) against which the central bank has initiated bankruptcy proceedings under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) recently.
The RBI has appointed Nageswara Rao Y as the administrator for the firm for the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) after the takeover. In February 2020, the RBI-appointed administrator had invited expressions of interest (EoIs) for the sale of Reliance Capital.
The report noted that the bidders have two options - either they could bid for the entire RCL or any one or more than one of the subsidiaries of Reliance Capital. Its subsidiaries include Reliance General Insurance, Reliance Nippon Life Insurance, Reliance Securities, Reliance Asset Reconstruction Company, Reliance Home Finance and Reliance Commercial Finance.
As per the PTI report, other bidders included Yes Bank, Bandhan Financial Holdings, Cholamandam Investment, OakTree Capital, Blackstone, Brookfield, TPG, KKR, Piramal Finance and Poonawala Finance, sources said.
The deadline was extended on the request of some prospective bidders who had sought more time to submit the Expressions of Interest (EoI), sources further told PTI.
In September 2021, the firm informed that the company's consolidated debt was at ₹40,000 crore. Its net loss narrowed to ₹1,759 crore in the December quarter FY22 against a net loss of ₹3,966 crore in the same quarter a year ago.
However, net loss widened from ₹1,156 crore on a quarter-on-quarter basis. The total income of the firm came in at ₹4,083 crore in Q3FY22, down from ₹4,890 crore in Q3FY21.