Aircel case in SC not going to impact merger: RCom

New Delhi: Telecom operator Reliance Communications on Monday hoped that the ongoing case against Maxis top officials will not impact the merger of its wireless business with that of Aircel.

"Our application is pending before SEBI and CCI for approval. We believe that in the next couple of weeks, we will obtain those approvals. As far Supreme Court... Is concerned, there is no impact on merger of RCom and Aircel," RCom President Punit Garg said during a conference call on the company's earnings.

Malaysian business tycoon T Ananda Krishnan and top official of his Maxis Group Augustus Ralph Marshall have been issued stern warning for "running away" from Indian court of law by the Supreme Court which said it will ensure that "there is no absconder".

Maxis owns 74 percent stake in Aircel.

The bench, also comprising Justices N V Ramana and D Y Chandrachud, had said they will have to face the "consequences" for failing to appear before courts in India and it "might order auctioning of the spectrum allotted to Aircel-Maxis to recover the Rs 20,000 crore debt".

It said these Malaysian nationals, who have been summoned as accused in the Aircel-Maxis deal case, were not respecting the orders of the courts here and if they "don't care about the law and court's order" the apex court will deal with them.

RCom expects to cut down 70 percent of its debt totalling around Rs 42,000 in 2017-18 by leveraging its assets including by merger of its wireless business with that of Aircel and sales of mobile towers, company's Co-CEO Gurdeep Singh said.

During the earnings call, an RCom representative said the company expects to complete the tower transaction deal with Brookfield by middle of this year, which will bring Rs 11,000 crore in its book.

Brookfield Infrastructure has signed a deal with RCom to acquire its mobile towers.

RCom posted its first-ever consolidated net loss for the quarter ended December 31, 2016. Last week, it reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 531 crore for October-December 2016, mainly due to free 4G services being offered by his elder brother Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio.

The company had posted net profit of Rs 303 crore in the same period a year ago.

The consolidated revenue of RCom fell 11 percent to Rs 4,822 crore in the reported quarter, from Rs 5,420 crore in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.

The company reported decline of 10.5 percent in revenue realisation from voice calls despite minutes of usage going up on its network by 4.3 percent to 102.1 billion minutes compared with the previous quarter.

RCom reported a decline of 0.6 percent average revenue per user to Rs 154 and drop of 10 percent in data traffic on its network as against the previous quarter.