The simmering feud between the IndiGoNSE -13.31 % promoters took a turn for the worse on Tuesday after one of the warring partners complained to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) about questionable corporate governance practices, alleging that even a `paan ki dukaan’ would have handled things better.
Rakesh Gangwal, who holds 37% in IndiGo compared with co-promoter turned rival Rahul Bhatia’s 38%, said in his complaint to the market regulator that a shareholders’ agreem ..
ET on May 17 reported the agreement skewed in favour of Bhatia was at the root of the conflict between the founders.
The letter was also sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and commerce minister Piyush Goyal, apart from aviation minister Hardeep Puri and aviation regulator Arun Kumar.
In a separate letter to the board, Mr Gangwal has alleged that various related party transactions with the IGE Group were executed without seeking audit committee approval and many were executed without seeking competitive bids from third parties. He said many had been signed with retrospective effect (back dated).
He cited the example of IndiGo’s office spaces always rented from IGE Group companies. This year, when the lease expired, IndiGo again chose an IGE Group company for its office space.
However, instead of the lease rates logically increasing at renewal, the new lease rates going forward were lower by more than 25%.
“To the best of our knowledge such competitive bidding was not entered into when the original lease agreement was entered into with the IGE Group entities years ago,” ..
In his response to the requisition for an EGM to point out the related party transactions, Bhatia called Gangwal’s stand “false, frivolous, and misleading”. Bhatia alleged that the “real agenda of the RG (Rakesh Gangwal) Group was “to dilute and diminish the controlling rights of the IGE Group and to relieve itself from its obligations under the Shareholders' Agreement ("SHA") and the Articles of Association ("AoA") which ensure implementation and enforcement of the IGE Group's controlling right ..
0 Comments