Banks hope to recover 80% of Kingfisher loans

The SBI-led consortium of banks expects to recover 80 per cent of the Rs7,500-crore exposure in the failed airline Kingfisher, one of the lenders, IDBI Bank, said.

IDBI Bank is hopeful of recovering up to 80 per cent of its Rs800 crore exposure to Kingfisher, even as Vijay Mallya, promoter of the grounded airline, last week hinted at new revival plans.

IDBI Bank is one of the five public sector lenders in the SBI-led core group, which is in the process of recovering the over Rs7,500 crore in principal alone from Kingfisher Airline.

The airline, which took loans from as many as 17 banks, both in the public and private sectors, has not been servicing the loans since January 2012.

State Bank of India (SBI) has the maximum exposure of Rs1,800 crore while PNB has an exposure of Rs800 crore, BoI (Rs650 crore), Bank of Baroda (Rs550 crore), United Bank of India (Rs430 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs410 crore), UCO Bank (Rs320 crore), Corporation Bank (Rs310 crore), State Bank of Mysore (Rs150 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs140 crore), Federal Bank (Rs90 crore), Punjab & Sind Bank (Rs60 crore) and Axis Bank (Rs 50 crore).

The declared collaterals of the grounded airline include the Kingfisher House in Mumbai worth about Rs150 crore, the Kingfisher Villa in Goa worth around Rs90 crore and the brand Kingfisher, which had a notional value of over Rs4,000 crore at the time of its pledging.

Kingfisher has been grounded since October last year and lost its flying licence in December. It has also been not paying its employees since June last year.

Kingfisher still has two years to restart operations on the same permit, provided it comes up with a reliable revival plan.