World's largest steel producer ArcelorMittal on Monday offered Rs 42,000 crore to acquire Essar Steel Ltd, upstaging a Rs 37,000 crore bid by Russia's VTB Group-backed Numetal.

It has not given bankers the realisations they had hoped for. Now the government has unveiled a new approach even while they are modifying the act.

Mining baron Anil Agarwal's $1 billion share buyback offer of Vedanta Resources cheered up shareholders in London as the share price shot up by 26 per cent in the morning trade to over 800 pence.

At a hearing before a two-member bench of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), senior lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for ArcelorMittal, said \"NuMetal and Rewant Ruia are alter ego of each other. They both are the same.\"

Under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, the sale process has almost been completed in three cases -- Bhushan Steel, Electrosteel Steels and Monnet Ispat and Energy. There is less clarity in the other cases when the 270 day timeframe for resolution ends around now.

Of this amount, SBI hopes to recover around Rs 30,000 crore just from the cases with the National Company Law Tribunal

The bankruptcy proceedings would force Indian banks to book heavy losses. They are now focussed on mini- mising the damage

ArcelorMittal, the only other bidder to have put in a bid for Essar Steel in the first round in February, however, opposed the opening of the second round of bids and wanted only the first round of bids to be considered.

Kolkata-based Electrosteel Steels Limited, with debt of Rs 14,000 crore plus, recently became the first company from the dozen large distressed cases shortlisted by the Reserve Bank of India to exit from the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC).

There are hundreds of listed companies under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), where  the existing shareholders are expected to get a raw deal because of the new promoter or successful bidder bringing in fresh equity with a majority control.

Pronouncing its order today, the National Company Law Tribunal noted that certain provisions of the IBC were not followed by the committee of creditors and the RP while disqualifying both the bids earlier.

The International Monetary Fund has predicted a very gloomy scenario for the world economy after 2 years, Electrosteel Steels is the first among the regulator RBI's dirty dozen to exit bankruptcy and the cash crunch in the economy, it seems, is far worse than was originally believed; while the government attributes this to a \"sudden and unusual\" spike in demand for currency in the past fortnight, the fact is this has been building up for at least a month. Watch BusinessToday.In Editor Rajeev Dubey explain this and more on The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

In the first round, NuMetal and ArcelorMittal were the only two parties that had bid to take over Essar Steel but the insolvency resolution professional overseeing the auction was advised to reject both the bids owing to their promoters being linked to defaulter companies.

ArcelorMittal, which had been disqualified in the first round for being listed as a promoter of loan defaulter Uttam Galva Steel, bid along with Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Corporation.

India's biggest distressed asset investor, Rashesh Shah of Edelweiss Group, has accumulated the largest pile of bad loans - over Rs 90,000 crore. Will his gambit succeed?