You have recently joined as a partner in Sam and Jay Associates, a reputed firm of Company Secretaries, based out of Delhi. The senior partner of the Firm, Ms. Anju has deputed you to attend and provide your expert advis
CS Professional · Insolvency - Law and Practice · PYQS · December 2023
You have recently joined as a partner in Sam and Jay Associates, a reputed firm of Company Secretaries, based out of Delhi. The senior partner of the Firm, Ms. Anju has deputed you to attend and provide your expert advisory services to one of its key clients, namely SCL Ltd. which is one of the companies closely monitored by the equity analysts and other stake-holders. The chief promoter directors of the Company were two brothers namely Mr. Narayanan (Chairman) and Mr. Shankara (Managing Director). Considering the regulatory set-up in India, including the litigation settlement process and the penalties for non-compliances have been made more severe, the top Management wants to keep the Company free of any non-compliances given the multiple challenges impacting the organization. Upon your visit to the company, the MD briefed you about the company and stated the facts of the situation affecting the provisions of the IBC, 2016 as hereunder : SCL Ltd is involved in Engineering, Textiles and Chemicals businesses being the growth sectors of the economy. In order to reduce the existing debts and to make the company work efficiently in terms of liquidity and solvency, SCL Ltd, in the year 2013, took loans from consortium of Indian banks such as ABC State Bank with an exposure of ₹1,250 crore followed by Bank of Ajmer (₹1,000 crore), P & G National Bank (₹800 crore) and RV National Bank (₹750 crore). Going forward, as the Company wanted to venture into Telecommunication and DTH services in India, it approached foreign banks and obtained loans from Global Bank of UK (₹700 crore), Bank of Netherlands (₹450 crore) and Chartered Bank of America (₹350 crore). All the loans were personally guaranteed by Mr. Narayanan and SCL Ltd assured the banks to pay all the dues outstanding on time. The company as per their commitments, repaid the instalment on time. Everything went on well but from 2019, due to heavy losses, the company defaulted in paying instalment to all the Indian as well as Foreign banks. Due to the brunt of tough competition in telecommunications market and entry of new giants in the market, the rates of voice call and data plans reduced considerably. In view of the continued defaults, the Banks started sending reminders to SCL Ltd to clear off of their respective dues. RV National bank had a warehouse in Kolkata which it seized in the insolvency proceedings from Amaze Ltd. The said bank tried to sell the property at market price to recover the loan amount but it was all in vain. After many failure attempts to sell the property, the bank decided to lease the premises. SCL Ltd had come to know about it and approached the Bank in May 2018 to take the premises on lease at an annual lease rent of ₹1.50 crore. As SCL Ltd incurred losses from the year 2019, it defaulted in paying lease rentals for the last four years which amounted to ₹6 crore. SCL Ltd tried to sell its assets to various companies, including its rival Tele Tones Company, to clear the debts but the deals could not crystallize as expected. Later, the insolvency proceedings against SCL Ltd started on a plea filed by a Korean telecoms company after the company failed to clear its dues. The application filed under Section 7 of IBC, 2016 was admitted and an Interim Resolution Professional (IRP) who subsequently became the Resolution Professional (RP) was appointed. The Banks decided to enforce the personal guarantee provided by Mr. Narayanan. But he contended that the demand is not maintainable in view of the ongoing Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP). The Committee of Creditors (CoC) final meeting was scheduled to be held on 25th March 2021, but amid the nation-wide lockdown due to COVID pandemic, it got cancelled. As per the order of NCLT, CoC needs to complete the entire process by 30th March, 2021 and the resolution professional needs to file the resolution plan with the NCLT by 2nd April, 2021. Subsequently, in compliance with the NCLT order, a meeting of CoC was duly conveyed and a resolution plan was submitted by the resolution professional. Both the chief promoter directors of SCL Ltd contended that they were not invited for the meeting of CoC and the notice for the meeting and the draft resolution plans were not shared with them by the resolution professional which is not in accordance with the IBC, 2016 and a reference was drawn to the judgement of Honourable Supreme Court of India in Civil Appeal 8430 of 2018 as was held in the matter of Mr. Vijay Kumar Jain. In the light of the above inputs, answer the following questions with respect to the Constitution of Committee of Creditors (CoC) and matters connected therewith: All the four Indian banks, as a consortium gave loans to SCL Ltd. examine as to how they will form part of Committee of Creditors and how their voting shares would be determined?
Topics: Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP)
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