Comments
The day was supposed to mark a fresh beginning for the sick Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd (HPL) with the West Bengal Government finally putting its stake in the joint sector company under the hammer, on Monday.
On offer was approximately 31 per cent holding in HPL coupled with a right to control another nine per cent (disputed) holding, provided the private promoter, The Chatterjee Group (TCG), declines the offer to pick up the nine per cent at a price that will be determined by the bidding process.
As mediapersons thronged the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation headquarters ‘Protiti’, the centre-point of the action, news started coming in that downstream oil and gas major IndianOil (IOC) had emerged the sole bidder for the deal. IOC held nine per cent stake in the petrochem project through a previous transaction.
Representatives of a second company — Reliance Industries Ltd — dropped in. But, sources said, they came too late, nearly four hours after the scheduled closure of the tender. Comments were not available from the private sector oil major.
The State Government, however, decided not to announce the results of today’s bidding process, belying the expectations of the mediapersons.
"We have not completed the process of receiving and opening the financial bids. It will take another 7-8 days," State Commerce and Industry Minister Partha Chatterjee told reporters.
He denied that the bids were supposed to be opened this afternoon. "We have not committed to completing the bidding process by today. Neither will we open the bids today," he said.
Questions on the number of bids received were passed on to Roopen Roy, country leader and Managing Director of Deloitte, the transaction advisor appointed by the State. Roy would only say that it was the minister who should do the talking.
The day, in fact, started with a surprise, when Reliance, which was active in the run-up to the bidding process, did not arrive at the scheduled closure of the tender. “Till yesterday, it was slated to be a competition between IndianOil and Reliance,” a person close to the process told Business Line . Reliance’s absence came as a surprise even to IndianOil which lost an opportunity to submit a more modest bid than what it did.
That it was the lone bidder did not guarantee that IndianOil would be the winner.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.