The National Company Law Tribunal’s (NCLT) Mumbai bench on Friday approved the appointment of Deloitte’s Anish Niranjan Nanavaty as the Resolution Professional (RP) for Reliance Communication’s (RCom) ongoing bankruptcy process.
The bench, approving a plea by the Committee of Creditors (CoC), asked the RP to submit a report by May 23.
A petition filed by Doha Bank, a financial creditor to RCom’s subsidiary Reliance Infratel (RITL), before the tribunal, also came up for hearing on Friday. It has been posted for hearing on June 28.
Doha Bank had earlier moved the NCLT seeking a stay on the decisions of CoC. It claimed that the CoC had considered RCom’s lenders’ claims based on a corporate guarantee provided by RITL, which will reduce its voting share in the CoC.
A syndicate of four banks, including Doha Bank, have an exposure of about ₹1,400 crore in RITL. With the banks invoking the corporate guarantees and interim resolution professional (IRP) accepting their claims, the voting rights of the banks were reduced to 15 per cent from the earlier 55 per cent, Doha Bank counsel had informed NCLT earlier.
RCom’s lenders had earlier shortlisted five RPs based on technical evaluation for the debt-laden firm’s bankruptcy process. The CoC had earlier shortlisted five RPs from a total of 30 after receiving Expressions of Interest (EoIs).
The shortlisted five are: Ajay Joshi of Duff & Phelps; Ashok Kumar Gulla of RBSA; Sundaresh Bhat of BDO; and Savan Godiawala and Anish Nanavaty, both from Deloitte.
Duff & Phelps has quoted ₹3 crore as fee for six months while RBSA’s quote stood at ₹2.4 crore for six months and BDO quoted ₹3.6 crore for six months.
Deloitte, which was suggested by the lead lender State Bank of India as RP, had quoted ₹7.62 crore or ₹1.27 crore a month.