Friday, August 16, 2013

Kingfisher Airlines lenders stumped as value of pledged properties crashes

Mumbai:  Lenders to Kingfisher Airlines may end up recovering only a small portion of their loans to the bankrupt airline after discovering that two marquee properties given as collateral are worth less than what was claimed by Kingfisher Airlines.
Lenders, who are in the process of taking over possession of Kingfisher House in Mumbai, have valued the two key immovable securities — the Goa Villa and the Mumbai office — at Rs128 crore. This is considerably less than the Rs200 crore ascribed to the properties by Kingfisher at the time of the loan in 2010 and a fraction of Rs6,000 crore owed by the airline.
Kingfisher House, located close to the domestic airport, has been valued at about Rs93 crore by lead bank, State Bank of India (SBI). Vijay Mallya's luxurious villa has been estimated at Rs35 crore, bank officials from another large bank who did not want to be named, said. "We have almost reconciled to the fact that they may not be able to recover the entire amount since income tax authorities and employees will make a claim on the recovery made by banks," one of the officials said. Lenders had reconciled to losing a chunk of their loans to the airline but what has made them more uneasy is that the recoverable amount seems to be going down after the new valuation of the two properties.
16/08/13 Economic Times
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