The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Yes Bank have moved the Supreme Court against a Bombay High Court order that had set aside their decision to write off additional tier-1 (AT-1) bonds worth ₹8,415 crore. Bond holders have also moved a caveat in the case.
The top court has yet to give a date for hearing the petitions, as they are still under defects.
Yes Bank had in March 2020 written off AT-1 bonds as part of a reconstruction scheme.
Institutional investors such as mutual funds, including Reliance Nippon, and individuals had put as much as ₹8,415 crore in Yes Bank’s AT-1 bonds. Subsequently, the bank’s AT-1 retail bondholders moved court to challenge the decision and reclaim their money.
AT-1 bonds are a type of perpetual bonds that do not have any fixed maturity. They, however, offer relatively higher interest rates as they are considered quasi-equity instruments with a bigger investment risk.
The High Court had on January 20 passed the order on a batch of petitions filed by the bond holders including financial institutions and retail individual investors. However, at the request of Yes Bank, it had stayed the order for six weeks.
The write-off was lawful and necessary to protect more than 200,000 depositors/individual account holders, the banking regulator had told the high court.
Yes Bank argued that its administrator, appointed by RBI, had the power to fully write down AT-1 bonds. It said since it was a private lender and not established under any statute, and since it was not engaged in or performing any public duty and/or statutory function, it did not constitute a State under Article 12.
The lender said the AT-1 bonds were issued in pursuance of a contract executed between it and Axis Bank.
63 Moons Technologies, which has an exposure of ₹300 crore to the AT-1 bonds, had also challenged the write off decision.
The high court ruled that the decision to write off the bonds was not part of the final restructuring scheme and that the administrator did not have the authority to make the decision. “It appears that the administrator exceeded his powers and authority in writing off AT-1 bonds after the bank was reconstructed on March 13, 2020,” the Bombay HC said.
“… the impugned letter dated March 14, 2020 and the decision to write off AT-1 bonds deserve to be set aside and is hereby quashed and set aside,” it had said.
