Binani Cement-UltraTech deal gets big boost from small investors

Binani Cement's move to sell its business to UltraTech of Aditya Birla Group, ignoring Dalmia Bharat's bid has got a boost from an unlikely quarter. The operational creditors, who were being ignored till now in the dues settlement process, have approached the Supreme Court raising serious objections to Dalmia Bharat's most preferred offer made to the financial creditors along with allegations of misconduct by resolution professional.

"When the money (being offered by Binani) is being more, why should we be the only party to suffer haircut? While Binani Cement's proposal promises to pay everybody, in Dalmia Bharat's proposal's proposal we are not being paid in full," representative of Operational Creditors' Forum, Siddharth Tibrewal told DNA Money.

Braj Binani group flagship company Binani Cement had on Monday knocked at the door of the Supreme Court, bypassing the National Company Law Tribunal to prevent the sale of the cement company to Dalmia Bharat as it prefers an out-of-court deal with UltraTech.

The operational creditors, it has now emerged, had approached the apex court much earlier and now want to be a party to Binani case hearing slated for Friday.

"Our writ was filed much before Binani (Cement's petition filed on Monday). And we want to be part of the hearing on Binani's petition beginning Friday," Tibrewal said.

Operational creditors' dues total Rs 700 crore, including interest component.

As per resolution plan before the NCLT, for creditors whose dues are between Rs 1 crore and Rs 5 crore, the proposed settlement amount is 40%. For dues of Rs 5 crore to Rs 10 crore, it is 25% and for over Rs 10 crore, the settlement amount offered is just 5%, he explained.

The legal fight of the operational creditors appears to be a long-drawn affair as, apart from specific charges against the insolvency professional, it raises some very fundamental objections to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code which, it claims, discriminates operational creditors against banks and other financial creditors.

"The regime brought about by the IBC is clearly discriminatory, unreasonable, arbitrary and unfair to the class of operational creditors. IBC unduly and inadvertently favours the financial creditors over and above all other categories as mentioned thereunder without there being any justifiable reasons/basis thereof," said the petition filed before the Supreme Court by one of the operational creditors, a copy of which is available with DNA Money.

"We also have a long list of charges of negligence (of operational creditors' dues) and twisting of (interpretation) of the IBC law," Tibrewal said.

By Sumit Moitra, DNA Money