IL&FS saga: Here are answers to the Rs 90,000-crore questions investors have been asking
Only a month ago, Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd (IL&FS) was a trusted name in the financial sector or infrastructure sector. However, when a company with a debt of over Rs 90,000 crore defaults, news about it travels fast and wide.
IL&FS is now a household name for all the wrong reasons. To give a perspective of the size of money at risk, here is a fun fact — the amount of debt that IL&FS owes is 10 times that of Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher.
We take a look at the five Ws (who, what, where, when, why) and the H (how) of the entire IL&FS saga:
Who is responsible for the default?
The management of IL&FS is mainly responsible for the default. Poor management decisions resulted in IL&FS financing and getting itself involved in projects that were either unviable or had a long gestation period.
The company, which started out as a financing arm for infrastructure projects, started building them. However, the long gestation period of the projects was not matching with the short-term, high-cost fund that the company was able to raise, thus causing an asset-liability mismatch.
Stress on IL&FS books was visible much before the institution defaulted on its loans, yet the management did not take the issue seriously. Reports say the Risk Management Committee of IL&FS did not even meet for two years.
What caused the default?
While the management and the board of directors of IL&FS have to take the blame, there are other factors too. A slowing economy and rising default resulted in few financiers willing to participate in infrastructure projects. Add to that bureaucratic red-tape and we have the perfect mix for disaster.
While IL&FS stretched itself on generating funds and raising money from the market to feed its numerous subsidiaries, it was let down by the government when it came to releasing funds as part of the concessions.
Under the concession contract, a private partner gets exclusive rights from the government to operate, maintain and sometimes even carry out investment in a public utility for a given period of time. Revenue to the private party comes from the user fee charged to users of the facility while the government gets a fixed sum or a percentage of revenue.
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