Whoever says there’s a mad rush for prime properties in India’s financial capital and Bollywood city Bombay wasn’t at this auction. In a bid (pun unintended) to recover a small part of their pending loans from Vijay Mallya who’s defaulted loans to the tune of 9000 crores, SBI had decided to auction his Mumbai home.
Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher House in Mumbai to be auctioned today.
Hmm. Maybe I can buy it with a loan from SBI.— Ramesh Srivats (@rameshsrivats) March 17, 2016
The base price was 150 crores and the auction lasted for over hour 4 hours. However, unlike other auctions, there was not a single bid in this one.
The 2400 sqmt property went unbid for at the end of the day, much to the dismay of the beleaguered banks. While the reasons for lack of interest from home buyers is touted to be a high bid price, unwillingness to get involved with a controversial piece of property could likely be one. There are some other conspiracy theories.
No takers for Kingfisher House in auction. Might be a good strategy to say that it is haunted by bikini model ghosts at on new moon nights
— Madhavan Narayanan (@madversity) March 17, 2016
SBI, leads the consortium of Banks that had bailed the now-defunct Kingfisher airlines when its owner Vijay Mallya ran it to the ground, running into losses of crores. Even as the banks failed to recover most of their dues from Mallya, the latter was in the news to have received a generous severance package of Rs. 550 crores from Diageo, the company Mallya’s other company, United Breweries was sold to. No sooner had SBI called dibs on the amount, than Mallya had left the country citing ‘business reasons’, and the status of the dues remains up in air, much unlike the ill-fated airline.