IL&FS CLAIMS HIGH INTEREST FOR STAKE SALE IN TWO UNITS

MUMBAI: Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) has received more than a dozen expressions of interest (EOI) for acquiring the troubled financier’s stakes in subsidiaries IL&FS Securities Services Ltd and ISSL Settlement & Transaction Services Ltd, the company said in a press release.

These are the first subsidiaries the company has placed on the block in a bid to pay off debt of over ₹91,000 crore. They have received interest from a mix of banks, private equity firms and other financial services companies, the company said.

“IL&FS has received a strong response to its asset monetization process, initiated a fortnight ago, towards developing a resolution plan for the group,” the company said in a press release.

The board will scrutinize EOIs for eligibility after which “qualifying interested bidders will be invited to review information on the business that would be shared with them, so as to enable them to submit commercial bids,” it said.

Any binding transaction for the sale of assets, as well as the resulting resolution plan, will be subject to requisite approvals (including from National Company Law Tribunal) before the transactions are concluded. The IL&FS group will shortly be launching the asset monetization process for the sale of many other assets as part of its ongoing resolution process, the release added.

On November 12, the company had initiated the process for divesting its stake in both the subsidiaries.

The group has 348 subsidiaries, nearly half of which are overseas.