The Chennai bench of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Thursday adjourned a case involving troubled edtech firm Byju’s and a group of its US lenders to October 1, citing that the Supreme Court is looking into the matter.
The top court had last week agreed to hear an appeal by Glas Trust Co, which represents the US lenders, opposing a Rs 158-crore settlement arrived at between Byju’s parent Think & Learn and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). It is expected to hear the matter on September 17.
Glas Trust has alleged that the money paid by Riju Ravindran, brother of Byju’s founder Byju Raveendran, to settle the dispute with the BCCI is tainted.
On August 14, the Supreme Court had revived the insolvency case against Byju’s, overturning an NCLAT decision that had quashed the bankruptcy proceedings and approved the settlement agreement with the BCCI.
Earlier, Glas Trust had moved the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on September 4 against the insolvency resolution professional (IRP) for Byju’s. The matter involved Glas Trust’s removal from the committee of creditors (CoC) by IRP Pankaj Srivastava.
However, the NCLT refused to stay the CoC proceedings as the Supreme Court had allowed its constitution on August 21.
On September 3, the CoC held its first meeting where the IRP for Byju’s removed Glas Trust from the panel after concluding that it does not represent the minimum 51% of lenders in the consortium that provided a $1.2 billion term loan to Byju’s.
ET reported on September 7 that MSKA & Associates, an affiliate of BDO International, stepped down as statutory auditor for Byju’s. The audit firm cited the management’s lack of cooperation, difficulty in getting numbers and information, and the emergence of an issue that had to be reported to the corporate affairs ministry as the reasons for its move.
However, Byju’s claimed that MSKA resigned due to the edtech company’s refusal to backdate its financial reports.
MSKA is the second audit firm to resign from Byju’s. Deloitte Haskins & Sells had stepped down on June 23 last year, citing significant delays by the edtech company in providing audited financial statements for 2021-22.
