SBI to take 5 companies to NCLT for Rs 3,250 crore

MUMBAI: State Bank of India (SBI) is likely to drag five Kolkata-based companies, including Burnpur Cement and four Patni group entities, to the National Company Law Tribunal for insolvency proceedings over Rs 3,250 crore in unpaid loans.

Three people familiar with the exercise told ET that the Patni group has defaulted on Rs 3,000 crore of loans and dues, with Burnpur Cement accounting for the rest. The Patni group of companies in debt are Rohit Ferro Tech (Rs 1,300 crore), Ankit Metal & Power (Rs 700 crore), Impex Metal & Ferro Alloys (Rs 800 crore), and Impex Ferro Tech (Rs 200 crore). The stock of Burnpur Cement, which has a consolidated market capitalisation of about Rs 80 crore, lost 4.2% to end at Rs 9.25 apiece on BSE on Monday.

SBI didn’t comment on the reported move to take the defaulting borrowers to court. “All these companies availed credit facilities from SBI’s industrial finance branch, Kolkata, and these advances turned as non-performing assets or bad loans quite a few months ago,” said one of the persons cited above. “These companies are now in the process of being referred to NCLT for resolution,” the person said.

Following the regulator’s latest diktat, SBI is now trying to resolve all long pending cases under IBC in a time-bound manner. SBI has even approached different resolution professionals for consultancy as it also aims to depute its own interim resolution professional before the matter comes up for hearing at the dedicated bankruptcy court, sources said. United Bank of India, Allahabad Bank, and Bank of Baroda also have loan exposure to these companies.

Loans to Rohit Ferro were earlier converted into equities under a debt restructure scheme, with banks led by SBI holding stock ownership. Those loan accounts are now parked in the Stressed Assets Accounting Group (SAMG) Branch, Kolkata, after they turned NPA. SAMG, one of the most important departments at the bank, is now dealing with those bad loan accounts.

Gross bad loans in the Indian banking system amounted to Rs 8,40,958 crore in December, minister of state for finance Shiv Pratap Shukla informed Parliament last week. Industrial advances accounted for about three-fourths of such sticky loans. SBI accounted for the highest amount of gross NPAs at Rs 2,01,560 crore.Earlier in February, the RBI ordered a complete overhaul of the stressed asset resolution framework by withdrawing the then existing schemes.