Mallya comes with ice-breaking formula, offers 4k crore to banks

Vijay Mallya saga just got interesting when he offered to pay Rs. 4, 000 crore to settle his dues totalling Rs. 9,000 crores owed to a consortium of banks in India led by country's largest PSU bank, SBI . In Vijay Mallya's defence his lawyers at Supreme Court on Wednesday, argued that he was not an absconder and he was willing to negotiate and settle the litigation by paying an amount of Rs. 4,000 crores by September this year. The apex court has given one week of time to the banks to decide on Mallya's offer.

State Bank of India  leading the consortium of lenders had previously rejected Vijay Mallya's offer to accept Rs. 2,000 as one time settlement amount for the loans gone bad totalling nearly Rs  9,000 crores.  Lenders simply were not willing to take the haircut and rejected the proposal.

With increasing NPA mess in banking sector  and political will being questioned on catching the wilfull defaulters like Vijay Mallya , the conclusion of the Previous attempts made by SBI to auction the Kingfisher Airline's corporate office  in Mumbai to collect Rs. 150 Crores failed miserably.  It is believed that the base price at Rs. 150 Crore was too high and hence not a single bidder participated. Next on target of lenders for recovering money is the Goan villa of Kingfisher.

Latest offer of Rs. 4000 crore could be a welcome sign for lenders and a amicable solution may be near. Enforcement Directorate has summoned Vijay Mallya ,who is believed to be in London , to appear for investigation before April 12. Investigative agencies including CBI are also looking at banks' books and grilling bankers to ascertain whether Mallya was given undue favours in exchange of some favours offered to some of the bankers.