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Feedback Infra, a leading infrastructure services company that has been approved by the Indian Banks’ Association to help banks resolve their problem of non-performing assets, is confident that in the next few months it will be able to turn around two companies in the infrastructure sector that it has been managing for lenders.
It has formed a separate group, Stressed Asset Management Group (SAMG), to handle the stressed assets that it takes over and manages for the lenders.
Nearly 70 per cent of the estimated ₹7 lakh crore stressed assets are in the infrastructure sector and Feedback Infra has got the mandate to manage a portfolio of around ₹35,000 crore for leading banks and financial institutions, including State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Punjab National Bank and Edelweiss ARC.
According to Y Srinibas, Head, SAMG, Feedback Infra, once the group takes over stressed assets from a bank, it monitors the company, its projects and cash flows. “We run the company for the bank, but we do not sit on the board,” he says. According to Srinibas, at least two such companies that Feedback Infra manages are close to a turnaround. Another, which was looking up, now seems to be slipping.
Feedback Infra keeps a tight control on the progress of the projects, the cash flows and expenses and liaises with the banks on what steps they need to take to ensure there is a turnaround in the company’s fortunes. This whole process can take 12-18 months.
Feedback Infra’s stressed assets portfolio of around ₹35,000 crore is expected to nearly triple in the next year. This makes Feedback Infra, according to Srinibas, the largest handler of the operational aspects of stressed infrastructure assets, even as accounting and insolvency procedures continue simultaneously.
Fee-based incomeVinayak Chatterjee, Chairman, Feedback Infra, said the resolution of stressed assets was a milestone in the country’s economic history as it would help change the risk management and lending architecture.
According to him, managing and turning around stressed infrastructure assets provides fee-based income to Feedback Infra.
Apart from a presence in most of the States, Feedback Infra is present in over 30 countries, including in Africa, South Asia, West Asia and South-East Asia. Its subsidiaries include a company in the highway tolling, operations and maintenance business; another that provides operations and maintenance for power plants; and an energy distribution company in Odisha and Madhya Pradesh.
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