Re(con)struction of Yes Bank?


Recently, a reconstruction scheme for Yes Bank has been notified by the Indian Government. This shall result in speedy handover of operations to the lenders. This comes at a point of time when Yes Bank is under RBI's moratorium due to which withdrawals are restricted. The moratorium is expected to be lifted within 3 days of the issue of notification.
                                   
By Sirjan Kaur | 5 min read




On 5th March, the Reserve Bank of India put an imposition of a moratorium on Yes Bank, which essentially resulted in restriction on withdrawals up to Rs 50,000 per depositor till April 3 following a serious deterioration in the bank's financial position. The RBI also superseded the existing board of the bank, handing over the administration to Prashant Kumar, former deputy managing director and CFO of State Bank of India. 

After the Cabinet gave its approval for the restructuring scheme of YES Bank, various  private lending houses like  ICICI Bank,  HDFC, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Axis Bank came on board to inject funds in the bank. The authorized share capital of Yes Bank will be increased to Rs 6,200 crore from Rs 1,100 crore. The total number of equity shares shall get altered to 3,000 crore of Rs 2 each now. However, the Authorised preference share capital will still remain Rs 200 crore.

According to reports, ICICI Bank is expected to invest Rs 1000 crore in Yes Bank, which means more than 5% holding in the share capital. Other than that, HDFC is planning on investing Rs 1000 crore and Axis Bank shall put in Rs 600 crore. Kotak Mahindra Bank is also expected to infuse capital worth Rs 500 crore under this Reconstruction scheme.
 LIC is supposedly planning on buying around 1.35 billion shares in the company. SBI mandated on investing Rs 7520 crore in Yes Bank, to pick out 49% equity.

Investment in Yes Bank will be guarded by a 3 year lock in period for the entire pool of investors. All the measures have been taken with a motive of protecting Investors, depositors and the stability of Yes Bank.

 One thing that the notification did not address was regarding the treatment of additional tier-1 bonds issued by Yes Bank previously.


Moving on to the voting rights of shareholders, the extent of the rights of all shareholders except SBI are limited to-
1. Their shareholding
2. 9 percent of the voting rights of the entire pool of shareholders in total of the now reconstructed bank
3. as gazetted by the Reserve Bank, or whichever turns out to be lower.

Prashant Kumar shall continue with the administration of the bank, taking up the positions of Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Yes Bank. Other non-executive chairman and directors were appointed under the Reconstruction plan. SBI has been given the right to appoint two other members on the board for administration of the bank. RBI shall also have the right to appoint members as it thinks fit. Any and all investors having a share of more than 15% in the share capital of the company, also have a right to appoint a director to the board.

For the upcoming one year, the employees have been allowed to operate and work in the positions they currently hold. Till then, there shall not be any changes in the employee compensation plan too.

As per expectations, the next round of funding shall be seeked from overseas investors. The reconstruction work for Yes Bank has begun, now it's only a matter of time to see what shall happen in the future and what fate upholds for the bank in future now.