Sebi allows Religare Finvest to sell assets to ARCs, restructure debt, raise capital

INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Mumbai: The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has allowed Religare Finvest to take all measures it deems fit for the revival of
the company, including selling assets to ARCs, modifying its earlier order, and allowed restructuring of its debt and raising of
capital. Apart from the above purposes, it withheld its March order that Religare Finvest will not dispose off assets or divert any funds
without prior permission of Sebi for meeting its expenses for day to day operations, subject to strict adherence to the Reserve Bank of
India’s corrective action plan (CAP). Religare Finvest had sought relaxation from Sebi while the investigation was ongoing, so as to allow
it to execute revival plan for the betterment of the company by taking required steps including the restructuring of its loans,
securitization assignment of its assets to ARCs etc
to reduce its standing liability. In this regard, a personal hearing was granted to RFL on June 19 and June 26. Sebi pointed that as per the
company’s submissions, its provisional balance sheet shows that it has an outstanding debt of Rs 5,852 crore and a standard loan book of
Rs 3,229 crore, as on March 31. Religare Finvest had also submitted that its current cash flows are insufficient to meet the immediate one
year debt obligations. It has further submitted that the banks have the first charge over all the assets of RFL and there is every
possibility of the banks taking coercive steps to sell the assets to recover their dues. In March, Sebi had also directed Religare
Enterprises and Religare Finvest to recover loans worth Rs 2,315.09 crore from the Singh brothers and entities related to them
Religare Finvest had advanced loans to promoter related entities — RHC Holding and ANR Securities. The ultimate beneficiaries of such fund
diversion are Shivinder Singh and Malvinder Singh as the entities were jointly being controlled by them through Shivi Holdings and Malav
Holdings respectively,the regulator said in an interim order
Religare Enterprises holds 85.64 per cent in Religare Finvest.