No bids, Videocon’s energy business extends deadline

Videocon Oil Ventures Ltd (VOVL) has extended the deadline for submission of resolution plans to September 30 after it had failed to receive any bids from potential applicants, Mint reported citing two bankers aware of the development.

“We have received no bids so far. It has been almost a year since the timeline has been extended. Bankers believe that liquidation may not fetch any value, so the lenders have decided to extend the timeline further,” the first banker told the publication.

The oil and gas extraction business had earlier received expressions of interest from four companies including Vedanta and a Brazilian company Petrobras for its overseas assets, the report added.

Last month, the Supreme Court had had refused to interfere in the order given by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Vedanta Group’s Twin Star Technologies which had offered to pay Rs 2,962 crores for Rs 64,838.63 crores in claims admitted which is nearly four percent of recovery rate. NCLAT had ordered a stay on the implementation of the resolution plan after petitions from lenders.

The NCLT observed that the resolution plan was giving 99.28 per cent to the operational creditors, which it sarcastically hinted to be as a “Hair cut or Tonsure, Total Shave”.

It requested the Committee of Creditors (CoC) and Twin Star Technologies to increase the pay-out amount to these Operational Creditors as they were getting only 0.72 percent of their admitted claim amount.

NCLT also said a “doubt arises upon the confidentiality” over the liquidation valuation of the assets of the Videocon Industries during the insolvency process as Anil Agarwal’s Twin Star Technologies, the successful bidder, also “arrived at almost the same value”. PTI