Goa villa not up for sale, says Kingfisher

Mumbai: A day after lenders asked HDFC Securities to value two Kingfisher properties, the cash-starved airline on Friday said the Goan property is not up for sale.

"The reported "sale" of Kingfisher Villa and Kingfisher House are factually incorrect. Kingfisher Villa (in Goa) is owned by United Breweries Holdings and was offered as security to Axis Bank whose loan was incorporated into the lenders consortium," the airline said in an official statement on Friday evening.

On Thursday, after a meeting between 17-member banking consortium and the airline's management, bankers had said they have hired HDFC Securities to do a valuation of the two properties - in Mumbai and Goa - worth Rs 120 crore to recover a part of the Rs 7,500 crore loans to the Vijya Mallya-led airline.

The reported \"sale\" of Kingfisher Villa and Kingfisher House are factually incorrect, said the airline.

The Kingfisher statement further said, "United Breweries Holdings had voluntarily applied to the consortium in February for permission to replace the security value of Kingfisher Villa with equivalent cash."

In May, UB group's United Breweries Holdings had said Kingfisher Airlines has ceased to be its subsidiary but it had a significant exposure of over Rs 12,000 crore to the air carrier.

The airline had said on Thursday that Kingfisher House has been lying vacant after the staff moved to its new offices at The Qube in Mumbai. "...and at that time itself, on our own accord, we approached the banks with a proposal to liquidate this unutilised asset," it added.

The company also said there was no talk about loan recovery in the the meeting with the bankers on Thursday.

"The meeting of the bank consortium was convened in the normal course with a properly circulated agenda. There was no discussion on loan recovery or forced sale of any collateral," it said.

On the number of aircraft it has, the airline said it has 44 aircrafts endorsed in its AoP and intends to operationalise its full fleet post recapitalisation.

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