Mumbai: Shares of various non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) and banks dropped on Wednesday in reaction to the Reserve Bank of India’s new rules barring these lenders from investing in any scheme of alternative investment funds (AIFs) which has investments in a debtor company.
Shares of NBFCs, like Piramal Enterprises, Indiabulls Housing Finance, and Edelweiss Financial Services, fell 5-10% on Wednesday. The Nifty Bank index declined 0.9%
“NBFCs with a high exposure to AIFs and builder loans will be the two segments with the highest impact from RBI guidelines and we have seen shares of such companies experience a drastic fall today,” said Veer Trivedi, a research analyst at Samco Securities.
According to the Reserve Bank of India circular, released on Tuesday, NBFCs and banks investing in any scheme of AIFs that has downstream investments either directly or indirectly in a debtor company must either liquidate the investments in the next 30 days or make a provision for 100% of the investments.
Trivedi said liquidating such investments in 30 days would be a challenging task.
Money managers said smaller banks will be more impacted than the bigger ones by the RBI guidelines. “Most banks do not have a major exposure to AIFs and only a handful of NBFCs may be majorly impacted by these guidelines,” said Shibani Kurian, head of equity research at Kotak Mutual Fund. “These NBFCs may have to take a marked-to-market hit on these investments or make a 100% provision whose impact will be seen on the P&L.”
RBI suspects some of lenders used the AIF route to evergreen loans that are under stress, thereby delaying the classification of such loans as non-performing assets (NPA).
“The regulator is also concerned about the evergreening of loans and due to this we may see some NPAs in the coming period but that will not be immediate,” said Kurian.
“Investors must wait for some clarity from the management and should hold the stocks right now,” said Trivedi. Kurian suggests that investors must only consider NBFCs which have market leadership, strong parentage, large capital base, strong ALM (asset and liability management), and diversified liability position.
