The NCLT Mumbai Bench has allowed Reliance to go ahead and seek creditors’ nod for the proposed deal between Reliance Retail and the Future group. NCLT has set aside objections raised by Amazon as being premature. Reliance Retail will be reorganizing companies ahead of the Future Retail deal. NCLT has already allowed Future group to seek approval of shareholders and creditors for the RRVL deal. The deal entails RRVL acquiring Future group for Rs.24,713 crore. Amazon has been the big roadblock to the deal.
The problems at CDSL on Monday meant that thousands of traders and investors were unable to execute sell orders due to a technical issue with CDSL. It is India’s largest depository in terms of number of demat accounts. The glitch created problems in online authorization of sale by investors. This authorization is used as a proxy for giving signed POAs to brokers. The TPIN authorization was hit by the glitch. Some brokers allowed clients to skip the CDSL TPIN authorization and gave time till 5 PM to authorize the debits.
Penna Cement Industries secured SEBI approval for its proposed Rs.1,550 crore IPO. The IPO comprises of a fresh issue of Rs.1,300 crore and an offer for sale of Rs.250 crore by promoter. The fresh issue proceeds will be used to repay debt worth Rs.550 crore and for capex of Rs.105 crore. Another Rs.320 crore will be spent on upgrading raw grinding mill as well as setting up a waste heat recovery plant. Penna Cements has 4 integrated manufacturing plants with capacity of 10 MTPA and likely to grow to 16.5 MTPA by 2024.
Embassy Office Parks REIT raised Rs.4,600 crores debt at interest rate of 6.5% by pledging its Embassy Manyata Business Park assets to repay existing debt. The debt has been raised via private placement from mutual funds and insurance companies. It will use the debt raised to repay its zero coupon bonds raised in 2009 and having current outstanding value of Rs.4,530 crore. This will reduce the debt cost of the REIT from 9.4% to 6.8%. Manyata is 14.8 million SFT and hosts tenants like IBM, Cognizant, ANSR, and NOKIA.
In the midst of the battle for control for Zee Entertainment, its sister concern Dish TV is gearing up for a legal showdown with YES Bank, which had called for an EGM to appoint 6 of its nominees to the board of Dish TV. YES Bank holds 26% in Dish TV by invoking the pledged shares of Dish TV. However, Dish TV has held on to the view that since YES Banks wants to acquire control of Dish TV, it must first make an open offer to shareholders. Changes to the board of media companies needs prior approval of I&B Ministry.
The WHO has reiterated that it cannot cut corners on the approval process for the COVAXIN. Bharat Biotech’s COVAXIN is yet to be included in the Emergency Use Listing. Bharat Biotech has been submitting data to WHO on a rolling basis. The Emergency Use Listing will predicate on how quickly Bharat Biotech furnishes the required data to evaluate the vaccine’s quality, safety and efficacy. According to Dr. Soumya Swaminathan of WHO, the technical advisory group will meet on 26-Oct to discuss EUL for COVAXIN.
For the month of September 2021, domestic air passenger traffic grew 5.45% with the easing of lockdown restrictions. Over 7.07 million passengers flew domestically in Sep-21 compared to 6.70 million in Aug-21. However, the passenger traffic is well below the Mar-21 figure of 7.82 million. PLF in Sep-21 was in the range of 63%-78.8% compared to 60.3%-79.6% in Aug-21. Indigo dominated the aviation market with a 56.2% market share in Sep-21 with 73.6% PLF. Air India had a market share of 12.1% and SpiceJet 8.5%.
NHAI is in talks with investors like Canadian Pensions and Ontario Retirement to raise up to Rs.6,000 crore via its first private INVIT. This will be the first major asset monetization by a state-owned enterprise and government has an aggressive monetization target of Rs.6 trillion over 3 years. It is likely that CPPIB and OMERS would come in as anchor investors. The INVIT portfolio comprises of 5 road assets across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka, AP and Telangana, with tolling revenue of Rs.460 crore in FY21.