Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Investment Firms Finish Bidding for Aircel Assets Sale

Malaysia’s Maxis owned, Aircel had to face the tough front of insolvency this year after facing brutal competition from the entry of Reliance Jio Infocomm into the market in 2016. Now to pare off its debt to financial and operational creditors, the company is looking forward to selling its assets to the highest bidder. Among the takers for Aircel assets, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Sterlite Technologies and two other investment firms seem to be in line. Two people aware of the matter said that the lenders of Aircel, however, believe that a lump sum sale to a single buyer would result in a much better deal.

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Aircel Wishing to Sell to a Single Buyer

One of the people mentioned above to Livemint that although the bids have been received and the bidding closed on Monday, talks are going on about selling the assets to a single buyer which would result in a better price. The person said, “In a couple of days, these talks should happen. We are hoping to get over Rs 25,000 crore from asset sale proceeds.” It’s noteworthy, that Aircel Cellular Ltd and Dishnet Wireless Ltd, together known as Aircel, owe Rs 15,545 crore to financial creditors, and approximately Rs 35,000 crore to operational creditors.

Also, in October last year, things went downhill for Aircel when Reliance Communications didn’t give heads up to the asset merger deal with Aircel citing legal and regulatory discrepancies. RCom had said, that there was also, “intervention of vested interests to derail the deal”. Following the sabotage of this deal, Aircel filed for bankruptcy in February citing reasons like unsustainable high debt and widening losses.

Widening Losses Pushed Aircel to Insolvency

As per Aircel’s lawyer, the company’s assets are worth Rs 32,362 crore and it holds 65 MHz spectrum in the 2,100 MHz band, 103 MHz spectrum in the 1,800 MHz bands, and 21 MHz spectrum in the 900 MHz band. However, the specifics of other assets like fibre and towers and remain unknown. The sale of assets if goes north of Rs 25,000, would mean a sigh of relief for the financial lenders of Aircel including State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and Bank of Baroda.