IL&FS gets NCLT approval to sell headquarter to Brookfield Asset Management

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has approved the sale of infrastructure lender IL&FS’ headquarters, a 10-storey iconic property in Mumbai‘s business district Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC), to global alternative investment major Brookfield Asset Management.

Brookfield’s affiliate company Chronos Properties has emerged as the successful bidder to acquire the marquee property for over ₹1,080 crore. IL&FS has already received 10% of the total consideration and the deal is expected to be concluded in FY23.

The deal is part of resolutions that the government-appointed board has filed with the NCLT. This deal was announced by the then chairman of the board Uday Kotak prior to his tenure ending on April 2.

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has made a few changes to the IL&FS board recently. It has redesignated CS Rajan, who was CMD, as the non-executive chairman, while current executive director Nand Kishore has now become the managing director. These changes are effective till March 2023.

In its approval for the sale of the property, the Mumbai bench of NCLT has excluded the area spread over 21,644 sq ft out of the total property size, as this was assigned by IL&FS to HDFC Standard Life Insurance Company in 2001. “We confirm that NCLT has approved the proposal to sell TIFC (The IL&FS Financial Center) to H1 bidder,” an IL&FS spokesperson said in response to ET’s email query.
The iconic property was one of the first structures to come up in BKC, which is now the de facto central business district of the commercial capital. The high-end office building with around 450,000 sq ft of leasable area counts IBM, IDFC, The Carlyle Group, Avendus and Paypal as key tenants. Top three floors are occupied by offices of IL&FS Group companies and these are expected to be vacated in the due course as the deal reaches closure.

Separate email queries to Brookfield Asset Management and transaction advisor CBRE South Asia remained unanswered until the time of going to press.

Besides Brookfield Asset Management, several other global and domestic institutional investors had shown initial interest in buying the asset.