Birla | Business Upturn

Vodafone Idea likely to get loan after relief from GOI: Report

News Desk — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 04:57:39 +0000

According to sources familiar with the subject, Vodafone Plc’s ailing India unit is in negotiations with the country’s largest lender about new loans, in a move that may pave the way for other banks to give credit and boost the cash-strapped wireless operator’s survival chances.

According to sources involved with the negotiations who asked not to be identified since the conversations are confidential, the State Bank of India has asked Vodafone Idea Ltd., a joint venture between Vodafone and billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla’s conglomerate, to first devise a turnaround strategy.

According to persons familiar with the matter, the government-owned lender has requested that Vodafone Idea produce a thorough strategy on their financial viability, including stock infusion from the top shareholders, cash conservation strategies, pricing forecast, and a road map to return to profits. According to the sources, the mobile phone company is preparing this information for the lender. The talks are still ongoing, and there is no guarantee that the company will receive this cash.

An email sent to the State Bank of India seeking comment was not returned. Vodafone Idea declined to comment ahead of its quarterly results announcement on Friday.

If the bank loan is approved, it will be a lifeline for the company, which hasn’t made a profit since Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. launched a pricing war in 2016 and has been losing subscribers to larger competitors in the last year. After India issued a series of policy relief measures in September, which helped Vodafone Idea avoid insolvency, banks have grown more lenient toward the underperforming wireless provider.

Vodafone Idea’s overall debt as of June 30 was 1.9 trillion rupees ($26 billion), according to a Sept. 15 report from brokerage JM Financial, with 1.68 trillion rupees payable to the government and the remaining 234 billion rupees outstanding to lenders.

Let’s get down to some of the interesting and unknown facts about Kumar Mangalam Birla

Shivya Kumar — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:13:11 +0000

Kumar Mangalam Birla is an Indian Industrialist. He is the administrator of Aditya Birla Group, Vodafone Idea Limited, IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad. Birla was naturally introduced to a grounded business family. In 1995, he was named as the executive of Aditya Birla Group. He confronted difficulties inside the organization however his hopeful reasoning and his critical advances made the Aditya Birla Group a $40 billion global organization. Birla is a fourth-age individual from the Marwari Birla family from the province of Rajasthan. He did his secondary school at Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics and a four-year certification from the H.R. School of Commerce and Economics of the University of Mumbai. He later learned at London Business School and was granted Master of Business Administration from the University of London in 1992. He is likewise a privileged individual at LBS. He is a sanctioned accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India

Obscure and Interesting Facts about Kumar Mangalam Birla :

1. Contracted Accountant

Birla is a Chartered Accountant (CA) affirmed by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

2. Child and Daughter

Kumar Mangalam Birla has 3 youngsters. His girl Ananya Birla is an artist and his child Aryaman Birla is a cricketer.

3. Administrator of BITS, IIT and IIM

Kumar Mangalam Birla is the chancellor of the Birla Institute of Technology. He is likewise the executive of the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

4. Praises

Birla was granted the JRD Tata Corporate Leadership Award.

These were a portion of current realities about Kumar Mangalam Birla. He has plenty of accomplishments added to his repertoire. He got the honour of ‘The Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year-India’ in 2005. He has the pleasure of being the World Economic Forum’s “Young Global Leader’. He got the ‘Business visionary of the Decade Award’ from the Bombay Management Association also.

India to settle long-run tax dispute with Vodafone, Cairn: Report

Sneha Sengupta — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 06:58:19 +0000

India is in talks with Vodafone Group Plc and Cairn Energy Plc to settle long-running tax disputes with them, a top government official told Bloomberg. It comes after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last week tabled a bill in the Lok Sabha to nullify the tax claims raised based on retrospective use of an anti-evasion tax law amendment introduced in 2012.

“Some informal discussions are going on,” Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajaj, Revenue Secretary proclaimed in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday. “I would not like to discuss them in the public domain, but overall the answer to your question is, yes,” he said in reply to whether the companies wanted to drop the cases in international tribunals.

Letting go of pending litigation or renouncing any interest or costs is the primary step for companies to get qualified for exemption from the tax rule, established in 2012 which allowed officials to follow M&A deals in 1962 in case if the underlying asset was in India. Apart from choosing an opening room to soothe conflicts with Vodafone and Cairn, this move aids to facilitate the economy’s recovery by involving investment.

“We have not been influenced by arbitration matters which are going on in various courts,” Tarun Bajaj averred. “We want to give stability and certainty on taxation rates to foreign investors.”

Vodafone Idea Ltd., a conglomerate between the Vodafone Group and Indian billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla, still faces billions of dollars as a fee charged to the government. The company faced a drawback where the top court of India rejected petitions by telecom operators to reallocate their dues.

“It would make no sense for the government to come and say that we give this relief and companies say that it is not enough,” said Bajaj in a note. “ I am sure the government will find a solution.”

“If the economy does well, revenues automatically do well. But it’s not something that I don’t want to give up revenues. If it helps the economy I am OK to give up revenues,” Bajaj added.

This Friday, the Lok Sabha passed the Taxation Laws (Amendment) Bill of 2021, which will ascertain to settle conflicts with Cairn Energy Plc, Vodafone Group Plc along with 15 other companies over some crucial retrospective tax demands initiated by the Union government.

As Birla offered his stock in Vodafone-Idea to govt, Airtel stock reaches new heights

Aayushi Singh — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 10:57:48 +0000

On Thursday, the Vodafone Idea stock had tanked over 17 per cent on the NSE after the cash strapped telecom operators board had accepted Kumar Mangalam Birla’s request to step down as the non-executive chairman and non-executive director.

The stock was under pressure after Birla had offered to hand over his stake in the company to the government. In the past three trading sessions, the stocks of the company had slumped over 40 per cent.

Vodafone had tried many ways to relieve themselves of their financial stress but nothing had worked so far and they would be a matter of time away from filing for bankruptcy at the NCLT.

Birla in his letter to the government in June said that investors were not willing to invest in their company in the absence of clarity on the AGR liability, and an adequate moratorium on spectrum payments and pricing regime above the cost of service.

Vodafone Idea was owing over Rs 58,000 crore of AGR dues. In the previous month, the Supreme Court of India had rejected pleas by the telecom companies which allegedly had errors in the calculation of adjusted gross revenue related dues. Airtel and Jio would benefit from the exit of Vodafone.

As shown by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Vodafone had over 277.6 million wireless subscribers as of May 31. Vodafone Plc had offered their stake for free to lenders and the public sector telecom company, BSNL.

If there are significant changes made in the telecom policy by the government then it might be possible that the investors might be interested in infusing funds and then the bankruptcy filing could be avoided.