Suzlon moving CDR cell to give lenders time to sort issues:SBI

Loss-making Suzlon Group last month said it has started discussions with lenders for restructuring debt, including a two-year moratorium on repayment of term loans.

"I think reference to the Corporate Debt Restructuring (CDR) cell gives the bankers more time to iron out these issues and Suzlon's financials are a little more complex," SBI Chairman Pratip Chaudhuri told reporters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on India summit here.

Suzlon has a debt burden of over Rs 13,000 crore including Foreign Currency Convertible Bonds (FCCBs) obligations. A few weeks back, bondholders had rejected its proposal seeking four-month extension to repay overseas debt worth about USD 221 million.

Noting that Suzlon case is much different from that of Kingfisher, Chaudhuri said the former "is a much different case, it is a running company and has operations globally".

"Whatever little I understand is that they (Suzlon) took lot of short term debt...," he added.

SBI is estimated to have an exposure of about Rs 3,500 crore to Suzlon.

Talking about Suzlon, he said that its business model is such that "when you build a wind energy farm, the payment would come after a long period of time of 15-20 years, which they financed out of 3-5 years, so its more a mismatch than I would say an insolvency issue".

According to Chaudhuri, SBI is quite

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