Can a land bank be the solution to India's huge shadow bank crisis?

India's banks are rapidly losing faith in the shadow financiers that lend to property builders.

When a well-capitalized shadow bank’s credit rating goes from A+ to D in 10 days, it shows how fragile lending to India’s builders has become. It also highlights the policy error of not addressing the root of the problem: land.

In June, three months before the unexpected default by Altico Capital India Ltd., I proposed a land bank that would buy stalled property projects from struggling developers. The bank would pay with government-backed debt securities, which the builders would use to repay loans.

To see how this could prevent liquidity problems from cascading into solvency issues, consider the Altico default. The Clearwater Capital Partners-backed firm missed a measly $2.8 million interest payment after its tight but manageable repayment schedule of $135 million became a squeeze at $233 million in the financial year that started April 1. The 63 cents of equity behind every dollar Altico owed to its creditors was of little help. Spooked by its $900 million-plus loan book for residential and commercial real-estate projects, two lenders exercised put options or reset the interest rates so high that they had to be prepaid.

India’s banks are rapidly losing faith in the shadow financiers that lend to property builders. A year after the collapse of IL&FS Group, a specialist infrastructure financier, the crisis of confidence is getting worse. Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd. shares fell as much 38% on Monday after the central bank imposed lending restrictions on Lakshmi Vilas Bank Ltd., a deposit-taking institution the financier has been trying to merge with to bolster its funding sources.

The nervousness with shadow banks isn’t about the quality of their retail loans, which are still fairly resilient. It’s their lumpy advances that are worrying investors. Dewan Housing Finance Corp., which defaulted in June, underwrites mortgages, but it also has $5 billion of exposure to developers. As banks try to restructure Dewan, a contentious issue is the haircut they’ll have to take if the lender is forced to sell its builder loan book at a deep discount.

Business Standard