The National Company Law Tribunal will, on Monday, take up the Liberty House petition against the Committee of Creditors’ decision not to open its bid for Bhushan Power and Steel and rejecting it outright.
The creditors had refused to consider Liberty House’s bid as it was placed after the February 8 deadline.
The global metal group, promoted by Indian business man Sanjeev Gupta, accused the creditors of considering the deadline sacrosanct rather than making efforts to recover the maximum value from the stressed assets. If deadline was so important, why was it extended twice, it asked.
Asked whether the company’s bid was better than that of the winner, Tata Steel, a Liberty House spokesperson said all the numbers doing the rounds are highly speculative. “All we want to say is our bid was superior in every way,” she said, adding that the company wouldn’t have minded being rejected had its bid been been opened and found uncompetitive.
In fact, she added, the creditors wanted to open the bid at their last meeting as they knew it was higher than the rest, but the lawyers stopped them.
Tata Steel was learnt to have emerged as the highest bidder for Sanjay Singhal-owned Bhushan Power and Steel with an offer to pay ₹17,000 crore to lenders and infuse additional cash of ₹7,000 crore for working capital and payments to operational creditors and employees.
TV Narendran, Managing Director, Tata Steel, recently said: “I would not comment on the (Bhushan assets bid) numbers. Media report says we are the highest...if media reports about other bids are right then probably we are the highest.”
Incidentally, Liberty House bought Tata Steel’s pipe mill in the UK and is in the process of making it profitable.
The other bidders for Bhushan Steel included JSW Steel, which proposed to pay ₹11,000 crore upfront, issue equity to lenders and infuse ₹2,000 crore as working capital.
Bhushan Power, which owes lenders ₹48,000 crore, has been put on the block by Punjab National Bank.