A deadline set by India’s central bank to restructure an estimated 3.6 trillion rupees ($52 billion) of stressed loans may push dozens more companies into bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. The Reserve Bank of India in February introduced new rules and a 180-day timeline for banks to recast loans once payments are missed, scrapping previous methods that could take an indefinite amount of time. Companies that were delinquent when the norms came into force will run out of time today, after which lenders must start moving court to admit the cases under India’s Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. This marks the latest attempt by the RBI to clean up banks that are suffering from the world’s worst bad-loan ratios after Italy, and have more than $210 billion of stressed debt on their balance sheets. The central bank has already asked lenders to take about 40 large defaulters to bankruptcy court as overdue borrowings hamper fresh investment. In May, the nation’s first big success under the new insolvency law handed about $5 billion to lenders after Tata Steel Ltd. bought insolvent Bhushan Steel Ltd.
