The airline is long gone, but it has left behind about 1.25 billion US dollars (INR 7,500 Crores) of debt on the books of various banks in India. While there were a lot of push and shove amongst various parties on the leased planes which Kingfisher Airlines used, now the focus has moved to getting whatever value left out of the remaining assets of the airline. One of the assets they’d offered, and the banks accepted as collateral without much due diligence was the brand “Fly Kingfisher”. Apparently, some audit firm valued the brand at INR 3,000 Crores (500 million US Dollars) and that was good enough reason to lend them that amount.

Anyhow, as per today’s newspapers:

SBICAP Trustee Co. Ltd (STCL), a wholly owned subsidiary of SBI Capital Markets Ltd, has sought a so-called expression of interest (EoI) from parties that wish to indicate their interest in acquiring the trademarks pertaining to the grounded Kingfisher Airlines.

The airline offered the Kingfisher brand as collateral to bankers. The Kingfisher brand was valued at Rs.3,000 crore by audit firm Grant Thornton India some five years ago.

From the looks of it, I think this is going to be an exercise in vain. The name Kingfisher, while was a good brand in the aviation sector at a point of time, is now an example of how things can go wrong. The only airlines due to launch in India without its own identity yet is the Tata-SIA airline which yet remains unnamed and intends to launch by end of the year. So who will buy these assets and why?

Related Posts:

• Kingfisher is no more, officially!
• So Long, Kingfisher!
• Flying Kingfisher Airlines one more time
• Singapore Airlines & Tata join hands to launch an airline in India

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