Private lending stressed assets provide opportunities to entrepreneurs, says Shyam Maheshwari

Private lending stressed assets provide opportunities to entrepreneurs, says Shyam Maheshwari Shyam Maheshwari is the founder and partner of SSG Capital Management. Maheshwari serves on the Ares SSG investment committee and is a director of Ares SSG Singapore. He focuses primarily on origination and evaluation of investment opportunities in India and other regions throughout Asia. In his former position at SSG Capital, he was extensively involved in deal sourcing, analysis and investing in Asia and business development in India.

Shyam Maheshwari in his recent talk, forecasts his views on the different ways to counter stressed asset development. He identifies that stressed assets are a $4.5 billion platform today. “India has happened to be a large part of our investments since 2009. The economy has a tailwind of growth. They have put in resources, talent pool and capital as well as processes. India is a market you have to work hard for”, Shyam Maheshwari said.

Shyam Maheshwari tells about the recent developments around stressed assets resolution in India. Foreign investors have done 14 steel site visits in the last two years but they haven’t concluded a deal in India yet. “It takes time but there’s nothing called wasted learning” says Mr. Maheshwari. According to Shyam Maheshwari, foreign investors have to continuously work on the process of executing things and are ready to invest their capital in India.

Shyam Maheshwari SSG also said about the challenges they face in the country. According to Shyam, assets have to be fundamentally sound for a successful investment. There are chances of mismanagement for an operating asset. Operating a completed asset is the first criterion to be done. “They thought about the steel cycle and realized that the government came up with the process which created a flow to steel prices in India. The same thing is happening in China too. Non-operating assets are shutting down. In that context, they had started looking at those assets and at that time the law (Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code) had not been enacted and there was no process of restructuring”, Shyam Maheshwari pronounces.