No takers for Mallya's Kingfisher House

The auction for Kingfisher House has ended as lenders failed to get any bids.

Auction of Kingfisher House, once the headquarters of Vijay Mallya's defunct airline, proved to be a flop show on Thursday with no bids coming in, presumably due to litigation fears and a high reserve price of Rs 150 crore (Rs 150 billion) -- dealing a blow to lenders' efforts to recover their loans.

The auction of the property, with a built-up area of over 17,000 sq ft in Vile Parle area near domestic airport in Mumbai, started at 1130 hours and ended in about an hour with no success.

"There were no bidders. I think the higher reserve price was the reason for it," said an official involved with the auction conducted by SBI Caps for a consortium of banks led by public sector lender State Bank of India.

The reserve price for Kingfisher House was set at Rs 150 crore (Rs 1.5 billion), which bidders found to be very high, he added.

The 17-member consortium, which had given loans to Kingfisher Airlines, will soon have a review meeting and may discuss the reserve price as well, sources said.

The online auction was held by SBICAPS Trustee, a subsidiary of SBI Caps.

Lenders had taken over Kingfisher House in February last year in a bid to recover part of their dues totalling over Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion), which includes unpaid loans and accrued interest.

The auction was conducted under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act (Sarfaesi), 2002.