Anil Ambani-led Reliance Capital has taken on CARE Ratings for downgrading its debt, saying the agency acted in a “premeditated and prejudiced manner”.

“Our company is fully current on all its principal and interest repayments as on date,” Reliance Capital said in a statement on Monday.
Technical glitch

It further said that the interest payment for NCDs, due on September 9, was activated on the due date, but could not go through due to a technical glitch in the bank servers.

The payment went through on the very next bank working day, which was September 11. Stressing that this glitch was also confirmed by its lenders, Reliance Capital said: “CARE has arbitrarily disregarded the above confirmation provided by third-party independent parties that established the alleged delay was on account of technical glitch in bank servers, while funds had duly been arranged on the due date.”

CARE Ratings had downgraded Reliance Capital’s debt of close to ₹17,000 crore to default grade ‘D’ from ‘BB’, taking into account the recent delay in servicing of coupons on several non-convertible debentures (NCDs).

Reliance Capital said that CARE did not give it an opportunity to provide comments on the rating action rationale. “CARE has acted in a pre-meditated and prejudiced manner, and has even suppressed the above facts completely in its rating action letter, thereby making it appear as if the company had defaulted in payment of interest by a day, whereas the reality is that documents had been provided to CARE that proved funds had duly been arranged on the due date, and the alleged delay was on account of technical glitches,” it said.

It also said the highly unprofessional, biased, prejudiced and unjustified actions of CARE will precipitate a chain of events that will gravely harm the interests of millions of retail and institutional investors having direct and indirect exposure to the securities of the company.............BL