Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal and his wife, Anita Goyal, on Monday stepped down from the board of the cash-strapped airline, sources said.
Saddled with more than $1 billion of debt, Jet Airways is struggling to stay afloat.
Jet Airways owes Rs 8,000 crore towards 26 banks, including State Bank of India,
Allahabad Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Bank of India and Canara Bank.
SBI and Punjab National Bank have agreed to bail out the Jet
Airways.
In 2013, Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways injected USD 600 million of
capital for a 24 per cent stake in the airline, three London Heathrow
slots and a majority share in Jet’s frequent flyer programme.
The infusion helped Jet pare down debt and fight growing domestic
competition.
To normalise its operations, a fund of Rs 1500 crore would be infused immediately. Besides the two promoters, one nominee of its partner Etihad Airways PJSC, Kevin Knight, also stepped down as director from the Board.
To restore normalcy of the airlines’ operations, the Board meeting has also decided that lenders would infuse a capital of Rs 1500 crore immediately by issuing appropriate debt instrument against security of its assets.
The airline would also issue 11.4 crore equity shares of the company to the lenders upon conversion of Re 1 of the outstanding debt as under the RBI circular, lenders can convert debt into equity at Re 1 when the book value per share of a company is negative. This decision will result in a fall in holding of the existing promoters Naresh Goyal’s stake to 25.5 per cent and Etihad’s to 12 per cent — while lenders will have a majority stake of 50.1 per cent.
Led by the SBI, the consortium of lenders would start bidding of the sale of its shares to new investors and would complete the process by June this year.
The airline said an interim management committee would also be formed to manage and monitor the daily operations and cashflow of the company.
Soon after the news of the resignations, the shares of the company closed 12.69 per cent up at Rs 254.50 on the BSE.
