*In my humble opinion, most of us Indians WRONGLY whine about bankrupt companies being sold off at a pittance to corporate giants 🙏🙏* The real scandal isn't the sale - It's the ballooning debt that these companies racked up without creating assets of equivalent value! .. *See, when a company goes bankrupt, the 2016 insolvency law kicks in, aiming to revive or liquidate it.* -> But the publicly available data from the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) shows that much of these companies have assets worth less than 5% of what they owe -> The point is that the problem isn't that corporations buy these companies cheap—it’s that these companies have no real assets to back their enormous debts. On what basis were they lent so much? *And what happened to the bank leaderships of those days?* Who sanctioned those loans? Because the truth is, they are the real conmen who, today, sit on the boards of other companies and live lavish lives scot-free 🙏🙏 .. *The case of Alok Industries is a textbook example.* -> Banks took an 83% haircut when Reliance Industries bought it years ago. And till date, we see people discuss that as cronyism -> But the outrage should be directed at how Alok Industries managed to borrow so much without creating assets that could hold value It's a clear sign that the lending process was compromised somewhere along the line. That is when the banks took the real haircut, not when Reliance bought it out 🙏🙏 The insolvency process isn't the villain here—it did what it was designed to do. .. *Let's not kid ourselves* - the lending practices at banks, especially the public sector ones, have been, at best, myopic, if not downright negligent. This isn't just about one company or one sector—it's a widespread issue that has resulted in billions in non-performing assets. *Outcome?* Write-offs or steep haircuts 🙏🙏 So next time you hear about another corporate giant picking up a bankrupt company for a song, don't just lament the low recovery rates. Ask questions about the banks’ then management and the sheer audacity of running a business on loans without creating value. Because the real fraud was committed by those two sides much before! .. *Support my work:* https://t.ly/SUPPORTjay *Check my work with:* - 3.2k+ on Decoding The Dragon (https://t.ly/chnwj) - 2.8k+ on Deepdives with Jay (https://t.ly/dwj) - 2.3k+ on BharatNama (https://t.ly/bwj) Best, Jayant Shilanjan Mundhra