Axis Bank said eight of the 12 big defaulters highlighted by the Reserve Bank of India in its June 15 circular owed over Rs 5,000 cr to the bank.
The RBI had given a list of 12 large accounts which together owed about 25% of the total bad loans of Indian banks. The total bad loans, or non-performing assets of Indian banks is close to Rs 10 lakh cr.
“The bank has exposure on 8 of these accounts,” Axis Bank said.
It said these accounts had a total outstanding of Rs 5,281 cr, out of which 5,071 was ‘fund based’, meaning that funds were actually released to this extent. The remaining 212 cr was non-fund based, meaning that the exposure was largely in terms of guarantees and other non-cash items.
Axis Bank said it has already made provisions of Rs 2,497 cr against these eight accounts. Besides, 80% of the exposure was ‘secured’, meaning that the bank could potentially recover at least part of the money by selling assets belonging to the debtors.
On June 15, the Reserve Bank of India identified 12 accounts having over Rs 5,000 crore of non-performing, outstanding loans, and asked banks to start insolvency proceedings against these account holders.
Some banks have already started insolvency proceedings against some of the account holders.
These account holders include Bhushan Steel, which owes Rs 44,478 crore to banks, Essar Steel, which owes Rs 37,284 crore and Electrosteel Steels, which owes Rs 10,273.6 crore.
The companies will be referred to the National Company Law Tribunal, which will then try to extract as much money as possible from the assets of these companies and redistribute it among the banks.
Banks, particularly those controlled by the government, typically do not initiate bankruptcy proceedings against big companies in India as companies in India are typically well networked.