Kingfisher House finally sold in 9th auction | Economic Times

Lenders have finally sold Kingfisher House, the erstwhile headquarters of the defunct Kingfisher Airlines, to Hyderabad-based company Saturn Realters for Rs 52.25 crore after eight failed attempts to auction the property near Mumbai airport.The Debt Recovery Tribunal, Bengaluru, has sold the property owned by absconding businessman Vijay Mallya’s aviation company at almost one-third of its reserve price of Rs 135 crore set in the first auction conducted in 2016. The property was originally valued at Rs 150 crore.The property had not found a buyer even after the eighth online auction conducted on November 27, 2019, with reserve price of Rs 54 crore.Saturn Realters bid for the property in the ninth online auction held in March this year with a base price of Rs 52 crore.The commercial building, originally known as Paradigm and later as Kingfisher House, has a total built up space of 17,074 sq ft across a basement, an upper ground floor, a ground floor and an upper floor.It is built on a nearly 0.6-acre plot beside Western Express Highway in a coveted location just outside the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA).The property transaction was executed on July 29 and was registered the next day. The buyer paid stamp duty worth Rs 2.61 crore for acquisition of the office building, showed documents accessed through Indextap.com.The buyer had paid the entire consideration for the property in March.Calls and text messages to Muralidhar Sarnala, director at Saturn Realters, remained unanswered until the time of going to press.The latest recovery will add to the Rs 7,250 crore that lenders have already got back from the defunct airline that owed a consortium of 17 lenders led by State Bank of India Rs 9,900 crore.The recovery from Mallya is a record of sorts, experts said.“Banks are close to recovering their whole principal amount,” said a former banker familiar with the case. “In fact, some from the consortium may have already done so. This is a unique case because banks have got their money back. It usually is common for banks to lose most of their money in such cases even after years of delays,” the person said.A large chunk of this amount – close to Rs 5,900 crore – was recovered by lenders in June 2021 after selling 14.98% of stake in India's largest beer maker United Breweries to Heineken.These shares were pledged by Mallya to banks for taking loans for the airline. Banks still have Mallya’s personal guarantee, which they can invoke to recover more money including more than Rs 5,000 crore of interest accumulated over the years.Kingfisher Airlines ceased operations in October 2012 due to its losses, precarious finances and dues to the lenders.