Ebix Inc. Chief Executive Officer Robin Raina received a $1.8 million bonus last week, even as a Sept. 30 deadline looms for the company to repay a loan of more than $600 million to a syndicate of US banks without having the cash on hand, Bloomberg News reported. Ebix, based in Johns Creek, Ga., disclosed the bonus in a regulatory filing Monday. It said that $1.2 million of the bonus was paid on Sept. 19, the day the board awarded it to Raina. The remainder will be paid in October, according to the filing. As of June 30, Ebix reported having $62.2 million of cash on its balance sheet and $14.4 million in short-term investments. It also said it had $8.3 million in restricted cash. Over the past two years, Ebix has amended its loan agreement with a consortium of US banks, led by Regions Financial Corp., multiple times to buy more time to pay off the loan. The company has been trying to spin off its India-based unit, EbixCash, in an initial public offering which was projected to be one of the largest in that country. The IPO filing is for 6,000 crore rupees, or about $700 million, of which some $300 million is earmarked for repayment of the debt. But the IPO has been delayed several times, in part because of questions from regulators. Hindenburg Research, which published a critical report about the finances of the Adani Group of companies earlier this year, criticized Ebix last year, describing the EbixCash unit, a money-transfer business, as a “house of cards.”
