How Jet Airways acquired monopoly power in privatised Indian civil aviation

Jitender Bhargava in The Business Standard

It is generally agreed that Indian aviation has failed to achieve the potential that the country offers. Whilst most have attributed the industry's lack of robustness to unclear government policies, high operational costs, and so on, few have ever cited the role of private Indian carriers in influencing policies.

Since such instances haven't been tabulated, one is oblivious to the scale of havoc caused. If quantified, the financial loss alone would run into crores of rupees besides the harm it has caused to the industry.

Perhaps the first instance of blatant interference in getting a policy tweaked was when the entry into the sector of the Tatas and Singapore Airlines was blocked in 1997. The revised policy ensured that no foreign airline could invest in an Indian carrier even while Kuwait Airways and Gulf Air owned a 20 per cent stake each in Jet Airways. The revised policy also gave Jet Airways time to buy back the stakes.

A couple of years later when Tata-Singapore Airlines submitted a proposal to acquire a 40 per cent stake in Air India, mischief was again in evidence. Singapore Airlines was forced to opt out of the race citing opposition. The intent was clear: an existing airline did not want a strong competitor in a rejuvenated Tata-Singapore Airlines-managed Air India. Imagine: if a Tata-Singapore Airlines-managed Air India had indeed become a reality, taxpayers wouldn't have had to fund the national carrier's bailout at a cost of Rs 30,000 crore. Air India, under the new management, would also have been an airline to contend with and not what it has become today.

In the previous decade, the government, with Praful Patel as the civil aviation minister, saw the introduction of an irrational 5/20 policy. This helped only one private airline at that time and barred others who did not possess five years of domestic flying experience and a fleet of 20 aircraft from taking to international skies. The current aviation minister, Ashok Gajapati Raju, is now seeking to do away with it. For that particular airline, this policy meant a lot. It could for some years reap the advantage of being India's only international airline besides Air India, whose ethnic traffic it could encroach upon to fill up its flights.

If crony capitalism has been beneficial for some, it has also unwittingly taken a toll of at least one airline. The 5/20 policy was a contributing factor in financially crippling Kingfisher. In his quest to fly internationally without waiting to complete the requisite five years, Vijay Mallya bought over Air Deccan, which was soon becoming eligible for international operations, at a price that defied logic. Kingfisher Airlines eventually perished under the weight of debt.

Air India was often "forced" to withdraw flights from certain sectors by citing "economical unviability". It wasn't a coincidence to see a private airline mount flights soon thereafter with market and passengers offered on a platter by the obliging national carrier.

No less intriguing has been studied silence of private airlines when seats were being recklessly doled out to foreign airlines though the policy was destined to harm them too, not just Air India. And today, we have the situation of Indian carriers failing to make a mark on the international routes with foreign airlines not only having been given a head-start but also a stranglehold on Indian market. The promoters of Indian carriers simply ignored the question of how their fund-starved carriers would compete on their home turf with mega global carriers bestowed with disproportionate quantum of seats and flights.

The way the Jet Airways-Etihad agreement was facilitated was yet another instance of external factors influencing a decision. The government granted 37,000 additional seats to Abu Dhabi, over and above the existing 13,000 seats, to help Etihad acquire a 24 per cent stake in Jet Airways.

Even though other Indian airlines and airports, notably private-run airports at Delhi and Mumbai, realised how the Jet-Etihad combination and the accompanying huge quantum of seats would take away their business and harm their long-term interests, they did nothing except voicing concerns to the civil aviation ministry.

As if no lessons were needed to be learnt for putting the sector on track, some carriers have, in fact, facilitated their political masters' wrongdoing. When Gulf countries sought additional seats, some Indian carriers at the slightest prodding gave it in writing that they needed additional seats. This helped build a case for doling out seats to foreign carriers while the records showed that the ministry was only acquiescing to the requests of Indian carriers. These carriers haven't used a single additional seat so far.

The mess that we witness today is thus not only a consequence of flawed government policies but also constant meddling and complicit silence of some Indian carriers. Do they deserve sympathy for the poor financial state of their airlines? Perhaps not, given the harm they have caused to the industry.

Needed: An exit policy for bad businessmen

S A Aiyer

Vijay Mallya has not paid employees of Kingfisher Airlines for months, and has defaulted on thousands of crores due to suppliers and creditors. Yet he has just donated three kilos of gold, worth almost one crore, to the Tirupathi temple. In August, he offered 80-kilo gold plated doors to the Kukke Subramanya temple in Karnataka. Possibly he believes that the gods can be bought off in ways that employees and creditors cannot.

How can a man who owes enormous sums to employees and creditors be free to throw gold around like small change? If there were any justice, surely the gold and golden doors should be seized from the temples and handed over to the employees and creditors. Surely they should have first right to Mallya’s assets.

After two decades of economic reform , we have not yet evolved rules that facilitate the exit of poor managements before they ruin a company beyond redemption. Kingfisher Airlines has been ground to the dust by Mallya, a liquor baron who should never have entered this space.

A free-market economy is not just a device giving owners the freedom to sack employees. It is one where creditors and employees have the right to seize a company defaulting on dues, and sack the management. The managing shareholder or promoter is only one of many stakeholders. If he cannot meet his obligations to other stakeholders , they should oust him in a true free market economy. In India, alas, our unreformed regulations and procedures leave promoters in control no matter how big a mess they make.

In the US, creditors can quickly seize a company that defaults on dues, and reorganize or sell it to a new owner . The owner can get temporary protection from creditors through Chapter 11 proceedings. In this, a judge determines whether the company is so far gone that it must be liquidated, or whether it can be saved through mutual sacrifices by creditors, employees and owners. In the process, the judge can change the owner. So, often workers survive bankruptcy proceedings , but the owner does not. That is what we should aim for in India too: an exit policy for incompetent, defaulting owners.

Kingfisher Airlines never made a profit, not even in the boom years when its rival airlines were profitable. Creditors should have moved in years ago when it became clear that the skills of a liquor baron were irrelevant for an airline. But in India creditors cannot quickly seize a company, least of all when the owner has political clout (as in Mallya’s case).

In the old licence permit raj, banks and financial institutions had to support existing managements and keep rescuing them. This has not changed despite the 1991 reforms. Banks have to keep throwing good money after bad.

Today Kingfisher is so worthless that it no longer makes sense to seize it and find a buyer. SBI Chairman Pratip Chaudhuri estimates that rehabilitating Kingfisher will cost a billion dollars. Nobody will do so — a new airline can be started for maybe just $100 million. Kingfisher has just lost its flying licence. Mallya’s hopes of being rescued by Etihad Airways of Abu Dhabi look like pure fantasy.

Even if it makes no sense to seize the airline today, why not seize his liquor business? Why not seize his prize luxury possessions, ranging from paintings to yachts or jets? Why not take over his cricket team, Royal Challengers ? Why not take over his football team Mohun Bagan, and his Formula 1 racing team Force India? Why is he allowed to keep all these, along with gold that he donates to temples, when he says he doesn’t have enough to pay employees or suppliers? He has given personal guarantees to banks: why are these not being enforced?

Mallya can be congratulated on one thing. Service was top-class in Kingfisher , and the airline gained a good reputation for quality. Had the airline been seized early on, it could definitely have been sold to a new owner. However , its reputation has steadily fallen with its continuing financial crisis, leading to cancelled flights and official grounding.

I constantly hear that India has gone in for neo-liberal policies. That’s pure rubbish. Neo-liberalism would have given employees and creditors the right to quickly seize and sell a company that cannot meet its obligations. The problem is not liberalism but the continuing old illiberalism that keeps promoters in charge, forcing other stakeholders to take a hit. Temples and religious trusts can keep enormous donations from defaulters instead of handing them over to others who, in all justice, should have the first right to such money or gold. This area desperately needs reform.

Civil Aviation in India

India mulls over 49% overseas share in airlinesBy Raja Murthy

MUMBAI - The Indian government on April 12 postponed to this week an eagerly awaited decision to allow foreign airlines own up to 49% stake in Indian carriers. But overseas funding alone is unlikely to rescue India’s struggling US$12 billion civil aviation industry.

It's more a case of mismanaged potential that has caused five out of the six Indian carriers, except Indigo, to have accumulated losses of nearly $2 billion in the past two years. India, the world's ninth largest civil aviation market, had passenger traffic doubling  to over 150 million in 2011, from about 73 million in 2005-06.

India aims to be among the world's top three aviation markets within a decade. In between are mountains to climb and some strange oddities to correct - such as building multi-billion dollar luxury airports in an industry dominated by low-cost airlines.

The foreign direct investment (FDI) move, if it materializes as part of the mountain climbing process, could give desperately needed survival cash and breathing time to nearly dead flying companies like Kingfisher Airlines. The Vijay Mallya-promoted carrier is drowning in a debt of $1.3 billion, with no new loans forthcoming, with over 60% of its aircraft fleet grounded and its employees receiving salaries for December 2011 only on April 9.

The state-owned carrier Air India has similar mismanagement woes, but continues to receive public money to bankroll it. On April 12, the government approved 300 billion rupees (US$5.7 billion) as bailout and part of a revival plan for Air India across the next eight years. This after Civil Aviation minister Ajit Singh informed parliament that Air India incurs losses of $1.9 million every day, or over $700 million annually.

Whether Air India would fare better without government ownership is as moot a question as whether more funding, including FDI, could only be more investment down the drain. Waiting to be surgically treated are roots of the problem such as unviable operating costs for airlines.

Unfairly high taxes on aviation fuel have long been a major complaint for India's airline industry. Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) continues to be over 50% costlier in India than in Singapore and Malaysia. Fuel costs contribute about 45% of the operational costs of India's airlines.

Yet India's state-owned oil companies sell jet fuel cheaper to international airlines than for domestic flights in Indian airports. Indian Oil, for instance, sells jet fuel at $1,010 per kilo liter for international airlines in Mumbai (March 1, 2012 prices), while domestic airlines pay a pre-tax cost of $1,316.77. International airlines are free from sales tax on aviation fuel, while domestic airlines pay an additional 26% sales tax that local state governments levy.

Instead of the obvious step of reducing aviation fuel taxes to reasonable levels - or to only at least 25% above international levels - the Indian government earlier this year allowed domestic airlines to directly import aviation fuel. That seems as bizarre as asking an impoverished dying patient to go overseas to buy medicine available down the street.

Even more peculiar is that India exports nearly half its production of aviation fuel. According to Ministry of Petroleum data, India exported 4.478 million tonnes of aviation fuel in 2010-2011, out of total aviation fuel production of 9.570 million tonnes,

Fuel costs are only part of the problem. Aviation infrastructure growth appears heading in a direction different from requirements for industry growth. Privatization of metropolitan airports, for instance, resulted in multi-billion dollar upgrades for the Mumbai and Delhi airports, and new airports for Bangalore and Hyderabad. The impressive new airports though are driving up operational costs for a budget airline industry that critically needs low-cost infrastructure.

The spectacular new Terminal 3 of New Delhi's is itself both solution and problem. Built and operated by the Delhi International Airport (P) Ltd (DIAL) - a joint venture consortium of global infrastructure company GMR Group, Airports Authority of India, Fraport and Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad - Terminal 3 makes Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) one of Asia's largest public buildings and the world's second-largest integrated airport, after Beijing Capital International Airport.

The $6 billion Terminal 3, spread along 4 kilometers and with a roof area of 45 acres (18.2 hectares), serves as future investment for Delhi having the world's fastest growing airport passenger traffic. According to the Montreal-based Airport Councils International, Delhi registered passenger traffic growth of 21.77%, faster than Jakarta's 19.2% and Bangkok's 12% growth. This compares impressively to the 1.8% air passenger traffic growth in North America.

But India's airlines and passengers are being asked to pay more airport fees and taxes to recover the multi-billion dollar costs for the new airports. Both Air India and Kingfisher Airlines alone owe the Delhi airport $100.4 million in airport fees. So airport employees are also suffering salary delays.

International carriers are too feeling the pinch. Malaysia's Air Asia, the continent's leading budget airline, announced termination of its flights out of the Delhi and Mumbai airports from March 24 this year, citing excessively high airport and handling fees and aviation fuel costs at these airports. Air Asia continues to fly from five other cities in South India.

The Airports Economic Regulatory Authority has proposed a 280% increase in landing and parking charges at Delhi airport, while the airport operator DIAL wants a 700% increase. Not just low-cost airlines, but Lufthansa, Air France, KLM and British Airways have announced putting on hold expansion plans in India due to the huge hike in operational fees at IGI Terminal 3.

Such headaches were not quite anticipated when an Air Deccan 48-seater ATR turbo-prop aircraft took off from Hyderabad to Vijayawada on September 26, 2003, to unofficially launch low-cost airlines in India. Since then, a heavily loss-making Air Deccan was bought by Kingfisher in 2007, and now a heavily loss-making Kingfisher is looking to sell itself to a foreign carrier.

The pending 49% FDI decision on the governmental anvil is actually a throwback to over six decades ago. In 1951, the government bought a 49% stake in Air India, founded and owned by the Tata Group. The government retained an option to buy another 2% stake and became owner. It did so under the Air Corporations Act of 25 August 1953 that nationalized all private airlines.

Air travel was booming in India in the 1950s, with cheaply available World War II surplus aircraft and India having bountiful skilled air pilots and maintenance crews after the war. The 26-page "Official Airline Guide" of July 1952, published by the Air Transport Association of India, lists schedules for about nine domestic airlines: Air India Ltd (also called The Tata Airline), the Air Services of India (also called the Scindia Airline), Airways (India) Ltd, Bharat Airways (also called the Birla Airline), Deccan Airways, Himalayan Aviation, the Indian National Airways, Kalinga Airlines and Air India International.

In 1953, India had over 20 private airlines, with unstructured growth without proper infrastructure creating market problems similar to the current woes of some domestic airlines. JRD Tata (1904-1993), called the father of civil aviation in the subcontinent, predicated an industry disaster. One of the reasons why the government nationalized the entire airline industry in 1953 was apparently to ward off many private airlines going bankrupt.

Now with Air India saved from bankruptcy with a $5.7 billion gift of public money, the government may as well consider re-privatizing Air India, and selling 49% of the stock back to its original owners the Tata Group.

The $5.7 billion bailout and the 49% FDI decision for overseas investors have better chances of working only if the government ensures there being low-cost operational costs to support low-cost air travel.

(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

An Ethical Financial Analyst

Financial analyst Neeraj Monga

 

The Cable Guy

Financial analyst Neeraj Monga’s reports have India Inc in a funk

Anirudh Bhattacharyya

The Canadian newspaper report, boldly headlined ‘Yellow Pages strikes back at analyst’, is framed and prominently displayed in a corner office of the Toronto-based firm Veritas Investment Research. The Financial Post article refers to a July 2006 report from Veritas, titled ‘The Count of Yellow Pages’, that was quite unambiguously bearish on the Yellow Pages Income Fund, even though at the time it was the second largest trust in Canada with a market capitalisation of over $8 billion. That didn’t prevent Veritas analysts Neeraj Monga and Chris Silvestre from arguing that “past performance is no indicator of future results. We believe that ypg is the poster child of this adage”.

The Bull Buster Age 40 Place of Birth Udaipur Work Executive vice-president and head of research at Toronto-based forensic accounting firm, Veritas, whose candid reports on prominent Indian firms are making headlines. Hobbies Monga enjoys cooking, especially experimenting with recipes. He likes Bollywood films (Dil Chahta Hai is a favourite) and listens to old Hindi music (especially Mohd Rafi). Has most recently read the biography of Steve Jobs. Loves travelling to sunnier climes. Family Wife Dimple is a homemaker. Children: Sanjana, 5, and Arjun, 1.

In the Financial Post article, Yellow Pages CEO Marc Tellier had fired back that 11 of 12 analysts had “buy” recommendations on the company. Now, almost six years later, the stock which was then trading at nearly $16 barely touches double digits—in pennies—on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

India-born Monga, executive vice-president and head of research at Veritas, has written a bunch of reports since then, and those involved in the inner machinery of BSE 100 stocks will certainly be paying serious attention to his work. After all, his reports on Reliance Industries and Reliance Communications (exactly five years from the day the Yellow Pages report was published), and then on UB Holdings and Kingfisher Airlines and, most recently, on DLF, have generated tremors—and headlines.

As Monga points out in an interview at his Toronto office, this isn’t about ulterior motives and targeting Indian companies: “Ultimately, it’s about two things, governance and vision. There are very few visionary people out there, mostly in North America, creating businesses from scratch. In India, some of the biggest companies are trying to rip other people off.” That’s just the sort of candid language that has roiled the usually placid waters of equity research aimed at Indian corporates. For instance, the DLF report summarised: “If your investment decision incorporates management integrity, then bypassing DLF will be an easy choice.”

There’s more to come: Veritas established a research unit focused on India this January. Led by Monga, the unit expects to deliver between 6-8 reports in 2012 itself. As a frequent visitor to India, Monga is aware of the terrain: “India, in general, as a nation, has been led by rhetoric rather than fact. So I decided perhaps we can inject some facts into the debate.” Clearly, he has forceful views and is unafraid about presenting them. “Generally information coming out of India and/or China has been pretty...” Monga pauses and contemplates the apt word, “untrustworthy.”

‘Brothers In Arms’: Jul ’11 What Veritas said “We find no credible evidence of ‘values’ and ‘integrity’ in RCom’s financial statements or those of its former parent, RIL.” RCom’s response “A malicious and motivated report containing baseless allegations, masquerading as research.”

Monga’s Indian critics may well blame his father for preventing the son from taking on a career as the local cable guy, possibly in West Delhi’s Vikaspuri. His sister Parul, who works in Toronto as a trader with the Western Ontario Financing Authority, recalls that in the early ’90s, just as the Indian economy was being liberalised, Neeraj, still pursuing his BA at Delhi University’s Rajdhani College, launched a cable business. Running cables from their home vcr, he piped Bollywood films and music, children’s programmes and Pakistani serials into the residences of neighbours in that cluster of Delhi Development Authority flats. Within two years, the enterprise had gone from an initial 10 subscribers to over 500. “He was the very first guy to start the process. He had the vision, but Dad wanted him to focus on education so he sold the business,” she says.

“There are a lot of companies in India which are overvalued because people don’t really understand the numbers.”

 

Monga went on to secure an MBA from the University of Indore, worked briefly in India, before taking a loan from Dena Bank for an MBA at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. Robert Fisher, who taught Monga here, remembers a student who was able to “analyse complex situations quickly”. Fisher, who now teaches at the University of Alberta’s business school, hired Monga for summer employment. That, though, wasn’t the sort of blue-chip internship his students coveted. Fisher says Monga did “incredibly well” to “overcome that barrier” and snagged “the best offer relative to any other student of his MBA class”. That was at Bain & Company, the same firm where Mitt Romney, now the frontrunner to become the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in the US, also worked before forming Bain Capital.

 Monga lasted about a year there. Fortunately for him, Michael Palmer, a veteran of Bay Street—Toronto’s equivalent of Wall Street—was planning to set up Veritas, which would concentrate on forensic accounting. Palmer, now president at Veritas, says, “The concept was started in 1999 at the peak of the dotcom bubble. We thought there was a lot of dishonest accounting going on out there.” Veritas came into being in 2000 and Neeraj Monga was its first employee. The research wing now has 17 staffers.

‘A Pie In The Sky’: Sep ’11 What Veritas said “We believe that kair’s book equity has been wiped out although audited financials pretend otherwise.” Kingfisher’s response "Very surprisingly, we never got a copy...but they widely disseminated their report to the media which leads me to be suspicious."

The research into Indian equities was Neeraj Monga’s initiative. While Palmer supported the idea, several of Veritas’s partners were sceptical and a degree of persuasion was required before the project was green-lighted. Palmer believes this new venture for Veritas is a need: “I think the Indian markets are at about the same stage as the North American or world markets were when we started Veritas in the first place. There are a lot of companies in India which are overvalued because people don’t really understand the numbers.”
The kernel for the debut analysis, on Reliance, came much earlier. Monga, who had followed the telecom sector, was viewing a presentation on the spinout of Reliance Communications from Reliance Industries: one slide stuck out as anomalous, but he presumed someone in India would comment on that. But there was not a peep for five years. “Ultimately, when I said we can write about India, we went back to dig deeper into that presentation,” he says. The question was how the Ambani family shareholding had gone from 38 to 63 per cent in the change of Reliance Communications ownership, which as Monga saw it, defied logic.

The next report featured another “easy choice”. As Monga says, “Airlines are generally not good business. We just said we’ll look at the annual report of Kingfisher. As soon as we opened the first annual report, we knew something was not right. So we read five years’ worth of annual reports and we figured out this is an effectively insolvent organisation.” In fact, Monga argues that Kingfisher should be delisted from the BSE for flouting Indian accounting standards. For the most recent report, again the real estate sector was another easy choice with DLF the 800-pound gorilla therein. “Anybody who has any experience of India knows the Indian real estate market is rife with underhand dealings,” Monga explains.

Now obviously there’s been a blowback against Veritas’s analysis. A spokesperson for Reliance Communications described it as a “malicious and motivated report containing baseless allegations, masquerading as research”. Lawsuits have been threatened—though not served. Monga isn’t perturbed, though his wife Dimple is, somewhat. The couple is raising two young children, five-year-old Sanjana and one-year-old Arjun, at their house in midtown Toronto. As Dimple Monga says, “Sometimes I’m a little apprehensive that there might be a negative response. I feel these companies can take it very personally.” But she remains supportive of her husband’s crusade to reform accounting practices in India.

‘A Crumbling Edifice’: Mar ’12 What Veritas said “Claims made by management about its ability to execute were fanciful.” DLF’s response “...is presumptive and mischievous as the analysts have never contacted the company to seek any information or clarification.”

Monga, though, is frank that this is not “social service”, as some in India may deem it to be. That’s a reality Palmer underscores: “We’re not doing it out of the goodness of our hearts, we think it’s a legitimate business opportunity and a product which is really needed in India right now.” Veritas’s clients pay a steep rate for access to the firm’s reports, starting at $50,000 in the first year and climbing. The firm certainly wants to broaden its base of clients to India, where it still doesn’t have a footprint, other than working with a consultant.

While its research is sold to institutional investors, some based in Singapore and Hong Kong, Veritas wants organisations like lic and Employee Provident Fund of India to subscribe. “They’re obviously the stewards of the savings of India’s small investors. They have a fiduciary duty to look out for their clients and if we can add value to the investment diligence process, then ignoring us is not in their interest.... It seems to me those managements are sleeping at the wheel,” observes Monga.

Nor is Monga daunted by rumours of the Indian market regulator, SEBI, imposing new regulations on independent equity research. Since Veritas doesn’t yet sell its research in India, it doesn’t need to be registered with SEBI. It is, however, registered with the Ontario Securities Commission and has a chief compliance officer. Still, he believes any such SEBI measure is a “good thing”. He also shrugs off accusations of being part of a bear cartel, retorting that those who are bullish aren’t taken to be “part of the bullshit cartel”. Coincidentally, his office, just off Bay Street, is also next to a bucolic sculpture of placid urban cows, called The Pasture, a counterpoint to the Raging Bull that defines New York’s Wall Street.

Monga shrugs off bear cartel accusations, retorting that those bullish aren’t seen as “part of the bullshit cartel”.

 

Clearly, Monga has figured out that Veritas’s research may just be pointing to a large, systemic disorder in India. That dire warning is delivered in Monga’s typically outspoken style: “After our telecom report, everyone said, ‘But the entire sector is in trouble.’ Then, after the Kingfisher report people said, ‘Ahh, but the airline sector is in difficulty, why single out a specific airline?’ After our DLF report, I am reading stories that the entire real estate sector is in a downtrend, and therefore DLF is no different. The power sector is also in trouble. Then how come ‘India is a dynamic and growing economy’?” He’s also clear about the “change” Veritas is targeting. “In India, dealings with ‘related parties’ are the norm, and most ‘related party’ dealings are a means to siphon funds from the publicly traded entity for the benefit of majority owners. We will highlight this.”
Unlike those of his ilk, Monga maintains a work-life balance, usually returning home by 6.30 pm. Cooking or watching Bollywood films are favourite forms of relaxation. The prospect of a slew of reports flowing from Veritas this year may just keep India’s corporate behemoths from relaxing though, unused as they are to any sort of intense scrutiny.