The biggest asset sale under India’s new bankruptcy law offers a breather to the nation’s banks, a number of which posted record losses for last quarter, Bloomberg News reported. Tata Steel Ltd. on Friday bought insolvent Bhushan Steel Ltd. and is paying 352 billion rupees ($5.2 billion) to Bhushan’s creditors. This is about 63 percent of the 560 billion rupees claimed by a consortium including State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank, the biggest government-controlled lenders in the country and Bhushan Steel’s largest creditors. Their shares rose on Monday. Banks had provisioned for a discount on the outstanding debt of more than 50 percent, said Ravikant Bhat, an analyst at Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd. in Mumbai. “The successful resolution of Bhushan is a positive structural development for the banking sector.”
