The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has vacated NCLT’s stay on Reliance Communications’ (RCom) asset sales, enabling the Anil Ambani-led company to sell its telecom towers and fibre. The move comes a day after the Supreme Court vacated a stay granted by the Bombay High Court, clearing the way for its earlier announced sale of wireless assets.
RCom's towers and fibre are held by Reliance Infratel Ltd, an RCom subsidiary.
“By an interim order passed today, NCLAT has vacated the remaining stay, and allowed execution of sale deeds and deposit of the proceeds with SBI in an escrow account. Based on these orders, RCom can now proceed with completion of its entire asset monetisation plan, covering spectrum, towers, fibre, MCNs and real estate,” RCom said in a statement.
Final hearing on April 18
NCLAT has posted the date for April 18 for final hearing and to decide on the allocation of proceeds.
“RCom is now confident of achieving overall debt reduction of about ₹25,000 crore within the next few weeks, from its asset monetisation programme... The distribution of proceeds of only the tower and fibre will be subject to the final decision of the NCLAT on April 18. Based on legal advice, RCom believes the claim of the minority investors in the tower and fibre proceeds, which is fully disputed by RCom, can at best be ₹200-300 crore," it added.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court directed RCom to file an appeal before the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal in the Reliance Infratel Ltd issue.
On March 12, NCLT had stayed RITL's asset sales (tower and fibre) till April 6, on a petition filed by HSBC Daisy Investments (Mauritius) Ltd, accusing the company of oppression of minority shareholders and mismanagement.
On December 28, Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJio) had entered into an agreement to acquire the wireless assets of debt-laden RCom, controlled by his younger sibling, Anil. RJio had emerged as the successful bidder to acquire RCom’s more than 43,000 towers, 1.78-lakh route km of optical fibre cable network, 122.4 MHz of spectrum in the 800, 900, 1800 and 2100 MHz bands and 248 MCN.
Ericsson India, which had a seven-year contract to operate and manage RCom's nationwide network, had filed an insolvency petition citing non-payment of dues.