According to persons briefed on the situation, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone and a Vedanta group firm filed legally binding cash bids for Karaikal Port on September 30 at the closing of the bidding window. Five parties made expressions of interest for the 600-acre port in August, including the two firms.
2,960 crore worth of debts were not repaid by Kariakal Port. On April 29, the National Company Law Tribunal’s Chennai bench accepted it for insolvency proceedings (NCLT). JSW Infra, Jindal Power, and a group made up of RKG Fund and Sagacious Capital were the other three.
At a meeting of the committee of creditors on Monday, the two final offers will be revealed.
Rajesh Sheth, a resolution expert for Karaikal Port, Vedanta, and Adani did not respond to ET’s inquiries. A public-private collaboration between the government of Puducherry and MARG, an infrastructure developer with its headquarters in Chennai and is supported by former merchant banker GRK Reddy, resulted in the development of the all-weather deep water port Karaikal Port. To develop the port, MARG Limited had established a special purpose vehicle. 2009 saw the port’s opening.
It has handled a variety of cargo, including liquid cargo, containers, project cargo, agro commodities, coal, sugar, cement, and fertilisers. A loan of 1,362 crore was initially approved for Karaikal Port by a group of eleven lenders, all of them are public sector banks or financial organisations.
The original lenders included Indian Bank, Allahabad Bank, Punjab National Bank (PNB), Oriental Bank of Commerce, United Bank of India (later merged into PNB), Syndicate Bank (later merged into Canara Bank), Central Bank of India, Indian Overseas Bank, IIFC Limited, State Bank of Hyderabad (later merged into State Bank of India), and Corporation Bank (later merged into Union Bank of India).
In 2015, loans from nine of the eleven lenders were sold to Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction Company. Corporation Bank and State Bank of Hyderabad were the only two institutions that did not sell their debts.
