ECL Finance puts stressed assets of Rs 2,393.4 crore on the block

March 23 is the last date to submit bids

ECL Finance, the non-banking finance arm of Edelweiss Group, has invited expressions of interest (EoIs) for stressed assets worth Rs 2,393.4 crore. These will be sold to asset reconstruction companies (ARCs). Of the 14 accounts put up for sale by the lender, most are from the real estate sector.

The stressed assets are either non-performing assets or special mention account (SMA) 2-category loans. The sale of assets will be partly in cash and partly in security receipts in the ratio of 15:85.  

SMA 2 accounts are those where repayments have been due for a period between 61 and 90 days.

The last date to submit EoIs is March 13. Prospective buyers will have time till March 20 to conduct due diligence, after signing the non-disclosure agreement. The last date for submission of bids is March 23.

The 14 accounts put up for sale has names such as Mumbai-based Neptune Developers, Bhumiraj Builders, Nirmal Lifestyle (Mulund), Saha Infratech, Marine Drive Hospitality and Realty, ITMC Developers and others.

The real estate sector has been struggling for a long time with inventory problems and liquidity pressure. In a major relief to the sector, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently allowed extending the date of commencement of commercial operations of project loans for commercial real estate by a year without downgrading the asset.

Experts believe this move will nudge developers to complete the stuck projects, rather than focus on their liquidity issues. It will also come in handy for both developers and housing finance companies (HFCs), which have a considerable wholesale portfolio.

Realty exposure of non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), which is out of moratorium, has a bad loan ratio of over 10 per cent as of September 2019 and the fear is that the rest of the book under moratorium may go the same way, rating agency CRISIL had said in its note.

About 30 per cent of the realty book of NBFCs has come out of moratorium while 40 per cent of the exposure is still under it. The bad loan ratio of the realty portfolio of NBFCs was 1.8 per cent as of March 2019 and by September it almost doubled to 3.3 per cent.

So far in this financial year, banks have put up Rs 46,690 crore of bad loans on sale, down from Rs 1.30 trillion in the financial year ended March 2019.