JSW Steel Outbids Liberty House U.K., Tata Steel For Bhushan Power
JSW Steel outbids Tata Steel and Liberty House UK in final round for Bhushan Power & Steel.
Sajjan Jindal-promoted JSW Steel Ltd. outbid Liberty House U.K. and Tata Steel Ltd. in the final round of bidding for Bhushan Power & Steel Ltd., according to three people in the know who didn’t want to be identified.
JSW Steel offered to pay Rs 19,350 crore to lenders of Bhushan Power and Rs 350 crore to the operational creditors of the company under the insolvency proceedings, the people said. That cumulatively was higher than Liberty House U.K.’s Rs 18,900-crore bid and Tata Steel’s Rs 17,200-crore offer, they said.
The lenders will evaluate the quality of the bids to identify the highest bidder, which will then be presented to the National Company Law Tribunal for approval.
Resolution professional for Bhushan Power, Mahender Khandelwal, Tata Steel and JSW Steel didn’t respond to queries sent by BloombergQuint. A spokesperson for Liberty House declined to comment on the bid value, saying all creditor queries have been addressed.
Bhushan Power owes its lenders more than Rs 47,000 crore and over Rs 780 crore to operational creditors. The company was one of the 12 large corporate accounts identified by the Reserve Bank of India in June 2017 for resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. But the resolution was delayed because of appeals by bidders.
Liberty House U.K.’s first bid, submitted after the deadline, was initially rejected by the committee of creditors. The U.K.-based investor appealed at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal challenging the creditors’ decision, stating that its offer was higher than that of Tata Steel and JSW Steel.
The appellate tribunal ordered the CoC to consider Liberty House’s bid, saying that it cannot exercise any deadlines of its own beyond what is stated in the code.
Having lost the bid for Bhushan Steel Ltd. last month, JSW Steel decided to increase its offer for Bhushan Power aggressively. It submitted the revised bid to the CoC in a sealed envelope. All the offers, including JSW Steel’s revised bid, were placed before the NCLAT for consideration.
Tata Steel, however, approached the Supreme Court seeking intervention, saying that revised bids should not be considered, but was denied relief. The NCLAT finally ordered that the CoC may seek fresh bids from all bidders involved by Aug. 13.
The CoC will decide on the highest bidder by late Tuesday.