ABG Shipyard jumps 5% as Reliance Defence shows interest in buying assets

ABG Shipyard shares were locked at 5 percent upper circuit at Rs 21.35 on Thursday after Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group company showed interest in buying company's assets.

Sources told CNBC-TV18 that Reliance Defence has expressed its interest in buying 'agreed assets' of ABG Shipyard but it is not interested in buying equity stake in ABG.

Liberty House has also expressed conditional interest in the Ahmedabad-based shipbuilding company.

The ICICI Bank-led consortium of lenders initiated the process to find a buyer for the debt-ridden defence firm ABG Shipyard to change its management.

After strategic debt restructuring (SDR) norms were invoked in October last year, a consortium of 22-lenders took control of 51 percent stake in the company that has a consolidated debt of Rs 16,400 crore.

Of all the lenders, ICICI Bank has the highest stake in the company at 11 percent, followed by IDBI Bank and Oriental Bank of Commerce.

The lenders have got impatient by the slow movement of finding new buyers by ABG Shipyard and have initiated the process to find a buyer by themselves, the company said in its notice.