Holders of $300 million worth of bonds voted 81% in favour of selling its wireless business along with its spectrum, towers, fibre and media convergence node assets.
The deal between Reliance Communications (RCom) and the unrelated company, Reliance Jio, was announced at the end of December, but needed approval from bondholders before it could go ahead.
RCom will now focus on its enterprise business in India and Global Cloud Xchange (GCX), its international carrier business.
RCom and Reliance Jio are unconnected except that the companies are run by rival brothers, members of the Ambani family.
It was the second time RCom had tried to get bondholders’ approval. At the first meeting, on 6 March, the meeting was adjourned as it was inquorate. This week, however, enough bondholders turned up at the resumed meeting, in London.
RCom’s asset monetisation plan will cut its debt and liabilities by about $3.8 billion. It has set up a special purpose vehicle that holds 125 acres of prime real estate at Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City in Mumbai, with approximately 20 million square feet of development potential.
At the same time RCom is in discussions with an unnamed “global strategic partner for a further debt reduction which will occur upon a stake sale process that is already underway”.
At the end of the process, RCom hopes its residual debt will be almost $1.1 billion.
But there are still many steps to take: RCom offers a timetable with dates through to the end of August 2018 at least.
