, Columnist
Games Indian Banks Play in Injury Time
Creditors and debtors struggle on before the bankruptcy whistle that means everybody loses.
Spoiled for choice. The banks aren’t.
Photographer: Sanjit Das/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Corporate banking in India is one of those painful-to-watch soccer games stretching goallessly into injury time. Neither the creditors nor the debtors have the energy to carry on, yet they’re dreading the long whistle: That’s when both sides lose.
The match was supposed to end Monday, going by the 180-day deadline the Indian banking referee gave lenders on March 1 to restructure defaulted loans of a minimum size of around $300 million, failing which they would have to send the nonperforming borrowers to the insolvency tribunal.