A week after its lenders
decided to recover their dues, cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines has started
paying salaries to its employees apart from approaching the aviation regulator
seeking licence renewal, sources said today.
"Some of us have
received salary dues. Those in the lowest package as well as some engineers and
pilots have also a month's salary dues," sources told PTI.
The airline has not been
paying salary to its employees since May last year, while it had started
delaying salaries much before the crisis broke out last October. The sources
also said airline Chief Executive Sanjay Agarwal is in the capital to meet the
Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to make a fresh request to resume
operations. However, both the developments could not be officially confirmed.
Earlier in the day,
Kingfisher shares rose as much as 5 per cent on the BSE, the maximum
permissible limit on a day, after one of its promoters, United Breweries
Holdings, hiked its loan limit for the ailing carrier to Rs 750 crore from Rs
300 crore.
UB Holdings has sought
approval from its shareholders to revise the lending limit for Kingfisher and
to authorise its board of directors to take necessary actions in this regard,
the company had said yesterday.
Reacting to the
development, shares of the company touched an intra-day high of Rs 10.53 on the
BSE, higher by 5 per cent from its previous closing price at 1230 hours.
"To accommodate
further lending to Kingfisher if required, it is proposed to realign these
limits further by increasing the lending limit to KFA from Rs 300 crore to Rs
750 crore and reducing the investment limit from Rs 1,200 crore to Rs 750
crore, thus maintaining the overall limit of Rs 1,500 crore..," UB
Holdings said in a shareholders' notice.
The revision was done to
facilitate the conversion of loans given to Kingfisher into
convertible/no-convertible securities, as required by the debt recast agreement
between the airline and a consortium of its lenders.
It can also be noted that
last Tuesday, the lenders to the airline, which number as many as 17 banks
which together had extended Rs 7,000 crore to the company, had resolved to
recall their loans to the airline, which had been grounded since October one
last, saying more than enough time was given to the management to revive the crippled
airline.
The lenders consortium
leader State Bank, which has an outstanding dud loan of over Rs 1,700 crore,
had said as a first step, lenders would monetise the collaterals given to them
from other group companies like Mangalore Fertilisers and the flagship United
Spirits, in which 54 per cent has been sold to the British spirits major Diageo
for around Rs 11,170 crore.
However, the UB Group has
denied that it had given USL shares as collaterals to the lenders as well as
the brand Kingfisher, which also covers its beer business.
The bankers are expecting
to recover around Rs 1,000 crore from these securities before the end of this
fiscal itself.
Yesterday, SBI chairman P
Chaudhuri had said in Chennai that he was hopeful of recovering a "good
portion of his Rs 1,700 crore dues from the airline."
"Of the total dues of
Rs 7,000 crore... so far, the approach was to revive the airline. But now we
have decided to realise the securities provided by the airline. Our endeavour
is to recover the full amount," Choudhuri said.
Noting that recovery of
dues would be after completing a "complicated, long, legal battle",
he said the bank has made provisions to collect Rs 1,650 crore of the Rs 1,700
crore through realisation of securities.
The lenders also hope to
take only a small haircut from the entire fiasco as they have collaterals worth
Rs 6,500 crore from group companies, excluding the brand Kingfisher, which in
good times was valued at Rs 4,200 crore.
The airline, launched in
May 2005 as a gift to Vijay Mallya's son Siddharth on his 18th birthday has
never made any profit and today has nearly Rs 18,000 crore which include bank
loans, accumulated losses, salary arrears, vendors dues and tax dues among
others.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/313199/mallya-surprises-kfa-staff-months.html
No comments:
Post a Comment