RCom plans $2.68 billion asset sale to Jio, Brookfield in next few weeks

Reuters  |  NEW DELHI 

By Suhail Hassan Bhat, Prusty and Neha Dasgupta

The 181 billion rupee ($2.7 billion) sale of will include airwaves and mobile masts to Jio and Brookfield, as RCom, controlled by Anil Ambani, aims to prune its debt pile.

Brookfield did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move follows a settlement with for partial payment of dues owed by RCom to the Swedish company.

An appeals tribunal in on Wednesday put on hold insolvency proceedings against RCom as part of the settlement and asked it to pay 5.5 billion rupees ($81.5 million) by the end of September.

Jio is the telecom venture of Reliance Industries, controlled by India's richest man

The (NCLAT) also asked RCom and to file an affidavit by June 7 stating they will abide by the settlement.

RCom had filed an appeal with the NCLAT after Law Tribunal earlier this month admitted an insolvency plea against the company filed by Ericsson.

Ericsson, which signed a seven-year deal in 2014 to operate and manage RCom's nationwide telecom network, was seeking 11.55 billion rupees from the company and two of its subsidiaries.

On Tuesday, RCom said its unit had reached a settlement with its minority shareholders in relation to the sale of its tower and fiber assets.

With debt of 457.33 billion rupees at the end of March 2017, RCom is the most-leveraged listed in

Like other established Indian telecoms firms, RCom has been hit by a fierce price war over the last year, especially after the entry of Reliance Jio, which offered free voice and cut-price data plans. It shut its mobile operations late last year.

($1 = 67.4900 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by and Prusty in New Delhi; Writing by Sankalp Phartiyal; Editing by and David Holmes)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Wed, May 30 2018. 21:28 IST