Reliance Communications (RCom) has applied to the NCLT to withdraw its petition for the spin-off of its tower business, a company statement said.
The tower business was to have been demerged from subsidiary Reliance Infratel Limited and transferred to an SPV owned by Brookfield Infrastructure Group. This deal would have to be renegotiated following the scrapping of plans to merge RCom’s wireless business with Aircel. For, the per tower tenancy rate would have been higher, had Aircel merged with RCom.
“The merger agreement for the combination of RCOM’s wireless business with Aircel has been allowed to lapse with mutual consent. Pursuant to the same, application for withdrawal of the said merger Scheme has been filed with NCLT on 3 October 2017. Furthermore, as a consequence, the application for the withdrawal of the scheme of the demerger of the tower business under RITL has also been concurrently filed as on 3 October 2017,” said an RCom statement.
“The RITL tower demerger scheme shall, in due course, be taken up for application with the required changes. The company shall issue the relevant notifications at an appropriate future date,” the company statement added.
Last year, RCom had signed a term sheet with Brookfield to sell 51% stake in the tower business for an upfront cash payment of ₹11,000 crore.
