IL&FS puts its entire road assets on sale

 The troubled infra lender IL&FS Monday put its entire domestic road assets on the block as it seeks to raise resources to repay the debt.

The group, which was taken over by the government on October 1 following a string of defaults, will be selling its equity interests in all the road sector assets, an official statement said, adding the same is being done as part of the two reports on progress and way forward submitted by the government-constituted board led by Uday Kotak.

The assets being sold include seven operational annuity based projects across the country, stretching over 1,774 lane kms and eight operating toll-based projects aggregating 6,572 lane kms, it informed the exchanges.It also includes four under construction road projects which would aggregate 1,736 lane kms on completion.The assets being put on the block also include a sports complex in Thiruvananthapuram and three other assets and businesses which are engineering procurement and construction and operations and maintenance businesses of IL&FS Transportation Networks, the statement said.

It said the sale of stakes held by the IL&FS group would be carried out collectively or individually, and sought expressions of interest.The Kotak-led IL&FS led and also the listed IL&FS Transportation Network will take a call in this regard, the statement said, adding the transactions will have to pass NCLT muster before consummation.The IL&FS group has appointed Arpwood Capital and JM Financial as financial transaction advisors along with Alvarez & Marsal as resolution consultants, it said.

Since August 28, the group which has as many as 348 subsidiaries almost half of are in overseas territories, is unable to service debt worth over Rs 94,000 crore, of which Rs 57,000 crore are from bank. Since the first default, group companies have cumulatively failed to pay up/redeem debt over Rs 5,000 crore, mostly dated short-term instruments.

National insurer LIC is the single largest shareholder in the IL&FS group with a little less than 26 per cent stake followed by the Japanese financial services major Orix Corporation which owns a tad over 23 per cent. The state-run lenders SBI and three others own under 10 percent each while HDFC holds around 9 percent in the company.