JSW Steel Declared Winning Bidder For Bhushan Power & Steel

JSW Steel Ltd. has been declared as the winning bidder for Bhushan Power & Steel Ltd., after the committee of creditors sent a letter of intent to the Sajjan Jindal-owned company, three people in the know told BloombergQuint.

JSW Steel has accepted the bid and the resolution professional will now approach the National Company Law Tribunal for the final approval this week, they said requesting anonymity.

According to the plan submitted by JSW Steel, the company has offered an upfront payment of Rs 19,300 crore to financial creditors of Bhushan Power & Steel, as compared with dues more than Rs 46,000 crore. Operational creditors will be paid Rs 350 crore, against their claims worth Rs 621 crore.

The financial creditors to Bhushan Power & Steel will be taking a 58 percent haircut on their total dues.

JSW Steel managed to outbid Tata Steel Ltd. and Liberty House U.K. to win the asset. It did so after revising its original bid of Rs 11,000 crore. Tata Steel had earlier challenged the bid revision, as it was the highest bidder at the time. The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal, however, allowed the revision, in the interest of maximum recovery.

The committee of creditors also rejected a last minute settlement plan by Sanjay Singal, the promoter of Bhushan Power & Steel. Singal had proposed to repay all the dues to the creditors after converting the entire debt into cumulative preference shares. The creditors would have received the full payout within 17 years, according to the promoter’s plan.

Bhushan Power & Steel was part of the first list of 12 large corporate accounts collated by the Reserve Bank of India in June 2017. While the lenders to the company admitted the case for insolvency proceedings immediately, the case saw considerable delays due to litigation by bidders and the promoter himself.

Singal had approached the Supreme Court challenging the constitutional validity of the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code, as it did not allow the promoter to place a bid for their own company. He was later joined by a number of operational creditors from various cases, who claimed that the code did not give them proper representation in approving a resolution plan. The apex court, however, held the IBC and dismissed the challenges.