First Reliance Communications AGM to be Chaired by Resolution Professional

In what is probably the first for any major corporate, a resolution professional will chair and address the shareholders of the Anil Ambani-run bankrupt Reliance Communications at the annual meeting with shareholders here on Monday. Companies in the diversified group will be holding their annual general meetings (AGMs) in the financial capital. On the venue front, there is a change from the past as the financially embattled group has chosen to hold the meetings in a city college instead of one of the biggest auditoriums in the city. In his heydays, Anil's father Dhirubhai, widely credited for creating the equity cult, used to book cricket stadiums located to address the mammoth shareholder meets.

Post-division of the businesses, both Anil and Mukesh Ambani companies held their shareholder meets at the sprawling Birla Mathoshree auditorium in south Mumbai. Starting at 10 am the AGMs of Reliance Capital, Reliance Infra, Reliance Power, Reliance Home Finance and finally Reliance Communication will be held at the audio of the KC College, where Anil Ambani was a student, officials said.

He will be addressing the meetings of all the companies, except the bankrupt RCom which will be addressed by the resolution professional, they said. RCom is presently going through an insolvency process and the National Company Law Tribunal had in July appointed Aneesh Nanavati of Deloitte as the resolution professional. According to RCom's admission, financial creditors have made claims worth Rs 57,382 crore from RCom and its two subsidiaries as of June 16. Of this, over Rs 7,000 crore are from group companies themselves and over Rs 47,000 crore are from 53 banks including Rs 14,775 crore from two Chinese lenders. RCom itself sought bankruptcy early February after its efforts to sell spectrum to Reliance Jio failed due to regulatory delays. The telco had in 2018 entered into an agreement with Reliance Industries to sell its spectrum for Rs 25,000 crore.

It can also be noted that it was RCom itself that had created troubles for Anil Ambani in the recent past, with regard to its dues to Ericsson, which had successfully sought Supreme Court's intervention to make the company pay Rs 577 crore. Anil Ambani was personally staring at being jailed for contempt of the Supreme Court for a failure to pay the sum and had to be bailed out by his elder brother Mukesh Ambani hours before the close of the apex court-mandated deadline for payment. As a result of the telecom price wars, the company has fully exited consumer-facing businesses which had made it into a household name in the past and is concentrating only on serving the enterprise segment.