NEWS

Byju's lenders kicked off creditor panel by court official Srivastava

US lenders were kicked off an influential creditors committee by a court official in India, dealing the group a setback in their efforts to collect more than $1.2 billion from the troubled education tech company, Think & Learn Pvt, which is known as Byju’s. The decision by the official, who is overseeing an insolvency case against Byju’s, means that the lenders didn’t have a chance to vote on who should run the company while a plan to repay creditors is put together. The lenders accused the official — Byju’s Interim Resolution Professional Pankaj Srivastava — of “secretly plotting to reject” their claims and of manipulating the creditors vote by excluding them. Before the lenders’ representative, Glas Trust, even learned that they had been removed, Srivastava held a meeting of the creditors committee and was selected as “permanent resolution professional,” lenders alleged in an emailed statement. Srivastava did not respond to an email sent after business hours in India. “Pankaj Srivastava’s actions are unprecedented and entirely illegitimate as no interim resolution professional in the history of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code of India has ever attempted to unlawfully strip financial creditors of claims of this magnitude,” the lenders said.