Jio, UVARC emerge top bidders for RCom assets

Reliance Communications' (RCom) assets have received bids of around Rs 25,000 crore with Reliance Jio and UV Asset Reconstruction Company (UVARC) emerging as the top bidders in their respective segments, according to banking sources.

"Jio and UVARC have emerged as the highest bidders at Rs 25,000 crore for RCom assets at committee of creditors (COC) meeting held on January 13, 2020," a source closely involved in the development told PTI.

Reliance Jio had placed Rs 4,700-crore bids for mobile tower and fibre assets of Reliance Infratel Ltd (RITL), a subsidiary of RCom.

UVARC has placed bids of around Rs 16,000 crore for spectrum, real estate assets as well as the enterprise and data centre businesses held in RCom and Reliance Telecom Ltd (RTL).

"The bidders have committed to pay 30 per cent of the proceeds of around Rs 7,500 crore within 90 days," the source said.

With this, the 38 lenders of RCom would recover 75 per cent of the total outstanding of around Rs 33,000 crore. This is the highest-ever recovery of dues by financial creditors in the telecom sector that has seen the exit or shutdown of 9 out of 12 telecom companies since 2012, the source said.

"In addition, the lenders will clawback the priority payments of around Rs 4,300 crore made to Chinese lenders (Rs 1,300 crore), Indian lenders (Rs 3,000 crore). Lenders will start recovering the monetisation proceeds starting March 2020," the source said.

COC members will have to now obtain their respective board approvals so that they can put in final vote to approve the resolution plans on January 31 ahead of the NCLT filing due by February 3.