NCC Bank to auction NHPC shares, volume almost 20% of hydel's total stock

ShareSansar, June 19:

Nepal Credit and Commerce Bank (NCCB) has once again announced to auction the shares of National Hydro Power Company Limited (NHPC) that were pledged by Himalayan Capital Markets & Investment Pvt. Ltd. and Nepal Power Development & Investment Co. Pvt. Ltd. for taking out loans from the bank.

NCC Bank has said in its notices that it decided to auction the shares after the two companies failed to pay back the loans despite repeated intimation.

The defaulters Himalayan Capital Markets & Investment Pvt. Ltd. and Nepal Power Development & Investment Co. Pvt. Ltd. had pledged 17,75,700 and 10,00,383 unit shares respectively with the NCC Bank.

It is worth noting that Indra Bahadur Thapa, director of Himalayan Capital Markets & Investment, and Krishna Prasad Bhandari, director of Nepal Power Development & Investment Co. Pvt. Ltd. are blacklisted by the Credit Information Bureau (CIB) since quite a long time.

NHPC has a total of 1,38,51,862 unit shares listed at NEPSE, out of which NCC Bank is auctioning 27,76,083 unit shares. That figure is almost 20% of the overall paid-up capital of NHPC.

The auction notice published on June 18 is not the first time that NCC Bank announced the auctioning of NHPC’s shares.

Earlier, on December 27, 2012, the bank had published a 15 days auction notice for 30,48,083 units of NHPC shares pledged by the defaulters. But the auction had to be called off on January 13, 2013 after the appellate court ordered to halt the process in response to a case filed by one of the bidders.

But again on May 8, 2013, NCC Bank published a notice saying that the court decision stood in its favor and the bank allotted shares to its bidders at the minimum amount of Rs 65 per share. As per the information from the bank, 2,72,000 units were allotted at the time out of which some went to the bidders, while others were released by the defaulters themselves.
 
In its latest auction notice, the bank has said that the remaining 27,76,083 shares of NHPC will be opened for bidding for 7 days starting from June 18 to June 24, while on 25th June the result of the bid would be opened. The result would be made public at NCC Bank premises.

The bank has fixed the minimum bid amount at Rs 65 per share. It has made no mention of minimum bid quantity though. Minimum security to be kept by the bidder is 10% of the bid amount.

Link of the auction notice: http://sharesansar.com/viewannouncements.php?id=14544