It is believed that apart from Bharti Airtel and Bharti Infratel, there are four players that have made a bid.
The
Bharti
group, through two of its companies, on Tuesday made a
conditional bid for the spectrum of Reliance Communications (RCom)
even as Reliance
Jio asked for an extension of the November 12 deadline to make an
offer under insolvency proceedings.
The
interim resolution professional (RP) had invited prospective
companies to make a bid for the company as a going concern with
assets and businesses like telecom towers, spectrum, a fibre network,
real estate, and an enterprise business, in order to recover debts of
more than Rs 33,000 crore of secured creditors.
It
is believed that apart from Bharti Airtel and Bharti Infratel, there
are four players that have made a bid. They include US-based Varde
Partners, a private equity fund that has a joint venture in India
with the Aditya Birla group. But the joint venture has not made the
bid, sources say. An e-mail query to Varde Partners did not elicit
any response.
A
Bharti spokesperson, in response to an e-mail query, said: “A
conditional bid has been made primarily for the spectrum, which is a
precious asset. Bid conditions include that the overall consideration
will primarily be by way of the deferred spectrum payable to the
government being passed on to us on terms and schedules applicable to
such deferred payments”.
Reliance
Jio, according to sources, has asked for an extension of the deadline
by 10 days. However, it is not clear as to whether the RP, Anish
Nanavaty, has granted it, and queries to him did not elicit any
response.
According
to sources, if an extension is not given, RCom’s committee of
creditors is expected to meet in a day or two to discuss the various
offers.
Jio
has been using the 58 MHz of RCom spectrum in the 800 MHz band across
21 circles through an agreement signed earlier. This is crucial for
4G services. The licence for the spectrum ends in 2021.
