IL&FS transfers two more road assets worth Rs 976 crore to Roadstar Invit

IL&FS on Wednesday said that it has transferred two more road projects — Hazaribagh Ranchi Expressway and Thiruvananthapuram Road Development Company — to Roadstar Infra Investment Trust at an enterprise value of Rs 979 crore.

The infrastructure sector finance firm which went under insolvency in September 2018 still has four more road special purpose vehicles (SPVs) with an aggregate enterprise value of Rs 5,274 crore.

With this, secured lenders of both the assets, which include Punjab National Bank, Union Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and L&T Infra Credit, with combined debt of over Rs 630 crore, will get 100 per cent recovery through restructuring of their debt under Invit.

Besides, group creditors (IFIN, ITNL, IL&FS) will receive Invit units as settlement of their dues, which will subsequently be transferred to the lenders of the group creditors as a resolution of their debt.

While Hazaribagh Ranchi Expressway is a BOT (Build, Operate and Transfer) annuity project involving four laning of 73 kilometres of the Hazaribagh-Ranchi stretch of NH33 in Jharkhand with concession up to FY28, Thiruvananthapuram Road Development Company is also a BOT annuity project involving improvement of 43 kilometres of the city road in Thiruvananthapuram with concession up to FY32.

IL&FS had earlier this year transferred two other road assets to Roadstar Invit already - Moradabad Bareilly Expressway and Sikar Bikaner Highway — at an enterprise value of Rs 4,295 crore.

Senior secured lenders of these two SPVs include Bank of Baroda, Punjab National Bank, Indian Bank, Bank of India, L&T Finance and they also have achieved 100 per cent recovery through restructuring their debt upon transfer to Invit. The cumulative enterprise value of these four road assets is Rs 5,274 crore, it added.

IL&FS plans to transfer the remaining five road SPVs valued at over Rs 13,000 crore to the Invit under the resolution framework, and will address debt of over Rs 6,800 across these nine SPVs.

Last week, the company had informed the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal that it had resolved debt of Rs 56,943 crore till September 2022 and reduced the number of subsidiaries to 101 from over 302 when the crisis began four years ago.

IL&FS, which defaulted on its loan repayment for the first time in September 2018, had to pay back its lenders over Rs 90,000 crore at that time.