London-based Adi Group and the Jet Airways Employees Union are to bid for acquiring a 75 per cent stake in the airline, it was announced on Friday.

“We want to be co-owners with employees in perpetuity. We have informed the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) through the Resolution Professional that the Adi Group and the employees consortium combined a few days back. Both parties met them separately so that there was a certain independence to it. Capital is not an issue for us,” Sanjay Vishwanath, Chairman of Adi Group, said at a press conference on Friday.

But the move has already run into rough weather as the National Aviators Guild (NAG) saying that is a registered trade union representing the pilots of Jet Airways adding that “We are not associated with the press conference — or aware of what announcement is to be made,” in a statement. The organisers of the press conference denied this claiming that all employees were behind the move.

Vishwanath was of the view that anything between ₹2,500 crore and ₹5,000 crore would be required for the airline to restart operations. He added that there were broadly four groups to whom money was owed — the Indian lender group, the foreign institution lender group, operational creditors and employees.

“We think the Indian lender group is owed about ₹8,500 crore, the foreign institutional lenders are owed about ₹4,000 crore, for operational creditors we have heard that the amount is anything from ₹8,000 crore to ₹12,000 crore. We do not know what the number is and that is where we need clarity. Roughly about ₹600-700 crore is owed to employees so in all we are talking about ₹25,000-26,000 crore,” Vishwanath said.

AdiGroup is London-based global conglomerate with presence in technology, across sectors. Most recently, they have forayed into acquisition of media, business services, software and Infrastructure assets to operate under AdiGro platform with long-term institutional investors.

Jet Airways temporarily suspended operations on April 17 this year. On June 17 after close to five months of trying to find an investor for the airline, lenders to the airline decided to refer Jet Airways to NCLT to start insolvency proceedings against the airline.

 

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