Click to play videoNew Delhi: Jet Airways is all set to buy Air Sahara in a revised, out-of-court deal. The effective merger date will be announced in two weeks.
The two airlines would present their agreement before the arbitration panel on Wednesday. A formal announcement would be made thereafter.
The three-member arbitration panel, comprising British judge Lord Stein, retired Supreme Court judges Justice S P Bharucha and Justice Jeevan Reddy, told both the parties to talk and resolve differences.
As against the earlier valuation of Sahara at Rs 2,200 crore, Jet is said to have wrapped up the deal for anything between 1450-1850 crores.
Jet had already paid an advance of Rs 500 crore to Air Sahara as bank guarantee.
While there was no official confirmation from either side about the financial details of the deal, sources said that a creditor's deduction of over Rs 200 crore is not being accepted by Jet, which is the reason behind the drop in Air Sahara's enterprise value from about Rs 2,300 crore, worked out when the deal was first struck, to Rs 2,050 crore now.
The merger is touted as biggest aviation deal in India and after the merger, Jet will command 40 per cent of domestic market.
Deal is revived nine months after it was called off with a reduction in the deal amount by Rs 350 crore.
After the deal fell through, following Jet's failure to get regulatory clearances by the deadline of June 21, 2006, both parties moved court and the matter was directed for arbitration.
Sahara filed a caveat in the Supreme Court after the media reported that Jet Airways had stated that the decision not to salvage the $500 million merger deal was purely on 'commercial considerations' and that it was moving the Supreme Court for transfer of litigation in different courts - Lucknow and Bombay High Court.
Jet also filed a petition under Section 9 in the Bombay High Court to get the escrow account of Rs 1,500 crore with ICICI Bank frozen.
Sahara has also threatened to sue Jet Airways, seeking damages to the tune of Rs 2,000 crore from the airline for illegally backing out from the deal.
Air Sahara, whose parent Sahara Group had decided to exit the aviation business, had earlier been courted by Kingfisher Airlines but a deal could not materialise due to differences over valuation.
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