Alpic Plans Dues Settlement With 13 Banks In One Go

Alpic Finance is looking for a one-time settlement with 13 banks -- including Oriental Bank of Commerce and Union Bank of India -- of the loans which it has defaulted on, said T S Chandrashekhar, executive director of the company. Chandrashekhar stated that that the defaulted amount stands at Rs 95 crore.

Chandrashekhar said, "It is the last quarter dues that are pending, which the company has to pay up. We are in talks with the respective banks to come to a one-time settlement."

He claimed that the company in 1999-2000 has made pre-payment towards some of the bank loans. Based on this pre-payment reputation, the company will be able to settle the matter with the lender banks out of court.

"The company has been badly hit by the industrial slowdown as the capacity utilisation of some of the corporate clients deteriorated heavily in the past one year. This made our loan recovery difficult and thereby delayed payments to the lending banks," he stated.

The company, however, has been regular in paying back the public deposit holders. It had accepted Rs 600 crore of public deposits, of which Rs 570 crore has already been paid back inclusive of Rs 275 crore of interest payment.

"We concentrated on paying back the public deposit and in the process, a part of the bank deposit remained as dues," said Chandrashekhar. The company, however, stopped taking public deposits from 1996-97.

The non-banking finance company's plan to demerge its distribution arm hit a roadblock recently. The company already has a combined distribution services division called Allianzers.

As part of the restructuring exercise, Alpic plans to demerge the division into a separate outfit -- Allianzers Distribution Services Ltd and proposed to convert the bond issued by Apple to the equity of the distribution outfit.

Mumbai High Court which was supposed to give its verdict on the demerger plan on Friday, deferred the decision as Bank of Baroda (BoB), raised objection.