Court winds up Serba Dinamik, 3 subsidiaries over RM5bil debt

 

Upon being wound up, Serba Dinamik and its three subsidiaries will be placed under a liquidator from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

KUALA LUMPUR: The High Court here granted today a petition by six financial institutions to wind up Serba Dinamik Holdings Bhd, and its three units – Serba Dinamik International Ltd (SDIL), Serba Dinamik Sdn Bhd and Serba Dinamik Group Bhd – over debts totalling about RM5 billion.

According to a report by The Edge, judicial commissioner Ahmad Murad Abdul Aziz allowed a petition filed by Standard Chartered Saadiq Bhd, HSBC Amanah Malaysia Bhd, AmBank Islamic Bhd, MIDF Amanah Investment Bank Bhd, United Overseas Bank (Malaysia) Bhd, and Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd, and granted an order to wind up the four companies.

Upon being wound up, the companies will be placed under a liquidator, Victor Saw, from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Ahmad Murad earlier heard an application by the companies to postpone today’s hearing after a legal representative of Efire Capital Holdings Ltd, an Abu Dhabi company that is a 50% joint venture between SDIL and another Abu Dhabi firm — argued that Efire Capital should be allowed to sell its assets first to help repay the debt.

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Its counsel Ranjit Singh argued that Efire Capital should be allowed to intervene in the matter, and be given one to 1.5 months to dispose of the assets to help pay off some of the debts before the winding-up, as it would be harder to sell the assets at a better price after the winding-up.

However, the application to adjourn was objected to by Jeyanthini Kannaperan, who represented the syndicated lenders, Benjamin Dawson, representing the bilateral lenders in HSBC Amanah and HSBC Bank, and Karen Tan, who appeared for Hong Leong Islamic Bank.

Previously, the four companies had offered to pay 15% of their debts to the local lenders by Aug 31 last year, and the remaining amount by end of last year, but had failed to do so.

Benjamin informed the court the case involving Serba Dinamik is the “largest insolvency case in the courts” given the debt of RM5 billion.

He said this is a case of a group of companies which has the largest debt owing in the insolvency court, and does not have a credible restructuring plan.

“It owes RM1.7 billion to the syndicated lenders, it owes another US$500 million (RM2.18 billion) to the sukuk lenders, RM250 million to Hong Leong Islamic, and to my client another RM70 million.”

Ahmad Murad did not allow the hearing to be postponed despite a plea by counsel Mak Lin Kum, representing the four Serba Dinamik companies, for a short adjournment to allow the sale of further assets.

Serba Dinamik’s shares on Bursa Malaysia were suspended last week after it failed to submit its annual report for the financial year ended June 2022.

It also fell into the Practice Note 17 (PN17) category, issued by Bursa Malaysia in relation to listed companies that are in financial distress.

Established in 1993, Serba Dinamik is an international energy services group providing integrated engineering solutions to the oil and gas, petrochemical, power generation, water and wastewater, and utilities sectors. - FMT