RIL, Welspun among bidders for bankrupt textile company Sintex

(This story originally appeared in on Dec 13, 2021)

MUMBAI: Four leading textile players — Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, B K Goenka’s , Sanjay Dalmia’s GHCL and Dinesh Kumar Himatsingka’s Himatsingka — placed bids for the bankrupt Industries, which weaves fabrics for global fashion brands like Armani, Burberry and Diesel.

While

teamed up with stressed asset buyer Assets Care & Reconstruction Enterprise for the Sintex bid, the other three parties have made solo offers. The four proposals will be evaluated by the resolution professional handling the Sintex bankruptcy matter and then will be placed before the creditors’ committee for further consideration, the Gujarat-based company said in a regulatory filing. Sintex owes about Rs 8,000 crore to financial and operational creditors.

Sintex is the second company under the Indian bankruptcy code for which RIL has shown interest. It had previously bought Alok Industries in partnership with JM Financial Asset Reconstruction Company.

Welspun has bid for multiple assets under the Indian bankruptcy code but met with no success so far. For Sintex, Welspun has routed its bid through Easygo Textiles. The proposed deal will help Welpsun in its backward integration strategy, said a person familiar with its plans. Previously, Welspun had offered a little less than Rs 2,000 crore to Sintex’s creditors but the proposal didn’t enthuse them. Sintex, incorporated in 1931, has a market cap of Rs 594 crore. It reported a loss of Rs 1,306 crore on sales of Rs 1,696 crore in fiscal 2021.

GHCL’s move for Sintex comes after it inked a deal to sell its home textile business in Gujarat to Indo Count Industries for Rs 576 crore. While Bengaluru-based Dinesh Kumar Himatsingka has routed the Sintex bid in his personal capacity along with his son Shrikant and Himatsingka Ventures.

Sintex was admitted into the bankruptcy process by the National Company Law Tribunal, Ahmedabad on April 6 this year on a plea by Invesco Asset Management over a Rs 15-crore default in payment of principal and interest of non-convertible bonds in September 2019.