Reviving Reliance Capital | Company receives 8 binding bids

The race for Reliance Capital has entered the last lap. Eight suitors have placed their bids at the end of the deadline under the insolvency and bankruptcy code. There were 55 expressions of interest (EOI) that was submitted and out of which 50 were shortlisted and now only eight players have come forward to submit binding bids for Reliance Capital when the deadline ended on the November 28.

The bids were invited under two options. One was to bid for the entire Reliance Capital as a whole, which includes all of its subsidiaries and the holding company. The other one, option two was in clusters that is separately for the insurance business, the wealth management business, the real estate part of it, part of it and so on.

CNBC-TV18 learned that five bids have come in for Reliance Capital as a whole. These include primarily this from Reliance Capital and Cosmea Holdings together under option one. Now Piramal Enterprises, of course, is a new entrant but Cosmea is actually started by Sam Ghosh, who used to be the head of Reliance Capital before the company was dissolved.

The other bids have come in from the Hinduja Group, from Oaktree Capital, Torrent Group and UV AI F.

Then there are three of the bids that have come in for separate clusters and these include Jindal Power, Choice Securities and Arthum Investments, but unlikely that these three bids will be considered because lenders prefer selling the company as a whole. So the five options are the ones that will be considered.

There are claims of almost Rs 31,000 crore for Reliance Capital, the bulk of the interest is in the general insurance business itself so there were steep haircuts they are looking at. Now the next step will be to see which one of these finally make the cut.