Essar Global repays Rs. 12,000 crore loans

The holding company for the Essar group of companies, Essar Global Fund Limited, on Monday repaid a debt of Rs. 12,000 crore to its various Indian and foreign lenders. This is in addition to the Rs. 30,000 crore that the company had repaid in August 2017 to various lenders from the proceeds of the Essar Oil sale.

Over the past two years, the Essar Group has repaid over Rs. 1,37,000 crore of debt (including that of Essar Steel), a majority of which is to the Indian banks and constitutes more than 80 per cent of its group debt, said a company statement.

Essar Global has now repaid approximately Rs. 6,300 crore to ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and Standard Chartered Bank. With this, these banks have been repaid their entire facility of Rs. 31,500 crore. The loans had been provided to Essar Global to fund its capital expenditure programme between 2008 and 2014.

The only continuing lender to Essar Global now is VTB, which has been working with Essar Global over the past three years to monetise certain assets, strategically lighten the balance sheet, deleverage the group and reposition it for growth in the future, said the statement.

In addition to repaying all of its existing secured debt, Essar Global has also simultaneously concluded a settlement with lenders who had provided debt facilities to erstwhile Essar Steel Minnesota Ltd. and to those who were beneficiaries of unsecured guarantees from Essar Global.

On Tuesday, the ICICI stock opened at Rs. 367.80 per share and touched a high/low of 374.40/366.60 per share. And the Axis Bank stock opened at Rs. 636 per share and touched a high/low of 636.50/630.60 per share.