With total debt of nearly RM5b, High Court allows Serba Dinamik and three subsidiaries to be wound up

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 10 — The High Court has allowed the winding-up petition filed by six financial institutions against Serba Dinamik Holdings Bhd and its three companies: Serba Dinamik International Ltd (SDIL), Serba Dinamik Sdn Bhd and Serba Dinamik Group Bhd.

The Edge reported that judicial commissioner Ahmad Murad Abdul Aziz allowed the petition filed by Standard Chartered Saadiq Bhd, HSBC Amanah Malaysia Bhd, Ambank Islamic Bhd, MIDF Amanah Investment Bank Bhd, United Overseas Bank (Malaysia) Bhd and Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd.

The four aforementioned companies are said to have a total debt of close to RM5 billion, the report added.

All four entities will now be placed under liquidator Victor Saw Seng Kee from PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) following the winding-up petition.

Winding up is a process in which the existence of a company is brought to an end, where assets of a company are collected and realised by a legally appointed liquidator.

The proceeds collected will then be used to discharge the company’s debt and liabilities.

Earlier, the court had heard an application by the companies to postpone today's hearing of the winding-up proceedings by lawyer Ranjit Singh, who is representing EFIRE Capital Holdings Ltd based in Abu Dhabi.

It is understood that the company is a joint venture between SDIL and its Abu Dhabi counterpart LIWA Investment Holding.

In today's hearing, Ranjit said his client should be allowed to intervene in the matter, and be given one to one and a half month to dispose of the assets to help pay off some of the debts before the winding-up, since he said it would be harder to sell the assets at a better price after the process.

He was also quoted as saying the winding-up would affect the existing joint venture and thus sought for more time for his client's disposal of their assets.

Datin Jeyanthini Kannaperan representing the petitioners, however objected to the postponement.

She said the companies had failed to make obligatory statutory payments, including those that relate to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and Social Security Organisation (Socso) for the staff, with her later stressing the interim liquidator report dated August 23 conclusively showed the companies were commercially insolvent.

Another lawyer representing the petitioners HSBC Amanah and HSBC Bank, Benjamin Dawson, argued that the oil and gas services provider is the largest insolvency case in the courts given its debt of RM5 billion.

The lawyer was quoted as saying this was a case of a group of companies which has the largest debt owing in the insolvency court, and it lacked a credible restructuring plan.

“It owes RM1.7 billion to the syndicated lenders, it owes another US$500 million to the sukuk lenders, RM250 million to Hong Leong Islamic, and to my client another RM70 million.

“This is close to RM5 billion, and there is no proper restructuring plan. There is a propensity as in the past for the Serba Dinamik group of companies to come out with bare allegations, with no credible evidence to support,” he was quoted as saying.

Serba Dinamik’s shares on Bursa Malaysia were suspended last week as the company failed to submit its annual report for the financial year ended June 2022.

The company also fell into the Practice Note 17 (PN17) category, issued by Bursa Malaysia in relation to listed issuers that are in financial distress.

On January 6, the company had submitted an application for an extension of time to comply with the submission of the Proposed Regularisation Plan to the relevant authorities pursuant to PN17 of the Main Market Listing Requirements of Bursa Malaysia.