|
Kingfisher, controlled by liquor
baron Vijay Mallya, has never made a profit in a struggling airline industry
|
Lenders to Kingfisher Airlines have
given the beleaguered airline 15 days to come up with "concrete
steps" to improve its operations, a senior executive at its lead bank said
on Thursday.
Kingfisher, controlled by liquor
baron Vijay Mallya, has never made a profit in a struggling airline industry
and has seen its domestic market share fall from second to last among the
country's six big carriers after grounding most of its fleet
"They have to give us a report
on what steps they have taken so far, what challenges they are facing," an
executive with State Bank of India said after meetings between the airline and
banks on Thursday.
SBI is the leader of a consortium of
lenders to Kingfisher, which had $1.4 billion in debt at the end of March.
"They will have to come up with
concrete steps to improve operations in 15 days, otherwise we will have to take
some other actions," said the banker, who declined to be named or give
specifics.
The executive also said banks
expected to recover about $25 million from the sale of Kingfisher properties in
Mumbai and Goa.
"We told them you have to put
these on the block and they have agreed," the SBI executive said,
referring to the Mumbai and Goa properties. "There is no point in keeping
non-core, unused assets."
He said the proposal to sell the two
properties was made about seven to eight months ago.
Kingfisher said in a statement that
it is "patently wrong and false to claim or state that banks have started
recovery proceedings" and said there was no such discussion at Thursday's
meeting.
Kingfisher House in Mumbai has been
vacant after staff moved to new offices, the company said.
"At that time itself, on our
own accord, we approached the banks with a proposal to liquidate this
unutilised asset and at today's meeting we raised the issue of this pending
approval," it said in a statement.
Earlier this week, bankers said they
were losing hope the carrier would be able to bring in an outside investment anytime
soon and may sell assets held against their loans.
No comments:
Post a Comment