Mumbai: Aircel<\/a> is considering filing an appeal in the dedicated bankruptcy court to allow it to sell other assets besides spectrum and use the money for maintenance and paying salaries till the legal battle over airwaves between the telecom department and the defunct telecom operator is resolved.
“An option is to appeal to the NCLT<\/a> (National Company Law Tribunal<\/a>) to allow us to sell assets, besides spectrum, put money in the escrow account and use it for maintenance and paying the roughly 200 employees,” an executive aware of the matter told ET on condition of anonymity.
Other assets include fibre<\/a>, enterprise, bulk SMS business and data centre.
Under the insolvency process, Deloitte<\/a> is running the bankrupt telco<\/a>’s asset sale process, being the resolution professional. The consultancy firm declined to comment.
There has already been a roughly 50% erosion in the value of the bankrupt telco’s assets due to regulatory delays.
Aircel’s spectrum in the 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz spectrum is its most prized possession, and a large part of its asset monetisation hinged on these airwaves.
“The court order came in June last year. Since then there have been regulatory delays and the result is that asset monetisation has not happened. Salaries to employees are getting delayed and there is not much money left to maintain assets,” said a second executive.
The court order referred to by the person is the resolution plan approved by NCLT in June 2020 which allowed UV Asset Reconstruction Company<\/a> (UVARCL<\/a>) to buy Aircel and its two units for a 74% stake, with an aim to repay about Rs 6,630 crore to the bankrupt telco’s financial creditors within five years. The amount then signified an 89% haircut for lenders who had made claims worth Rs 58,760 crore on the telco's outstanding loan amount.
Now, according to the executives cited earlier, there may be a drastic devaluation of as much as 50% in assets due to regulatory delays. This spells a recovery of only about Rs 3,000 crore for the lenders, said the executive.
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