Page 229 - A Banker Down the Rabbit Hole

65. A large borrower fast slipping

from a satisfactory conduct

O nce, my Chief assigned me to supervise a team of officers from

three member banks of a consortium to conduct a long
pending inspection of stocks and the unit in Himachal Pradesh,
of OFC Private Ltd. The General Manager (Finance) of the
company booked our return tickets in such a way that we could be able
to hardly spend a few hours there and return the same day in the evening
by 5 pm train. So we were to reach the company site by 11:30 am and
leave around 3:30 pm to catch the return train. No officer of other banks
objected to it. When I confronted the GM (Finance) of the company, he
assured me whatever we wanted to inspect would be made available and
we should not worry. But this was enough to put me on guard about this
company. I felt this was their tactic for some cover-up.

It was a big plant manufacturing Optical Fiber Cable (OFC) with technical
know-how from Nokia (Finland). The GM (Finance) took us around every
point of assembly line and we were impressed the way this finance man
had explained the technical terms and the process of manufacturing OFC
on plant and machines installed. The visit of the entire factory took about
2 hours. Though we found the whole thing very exciting, but I was getting
restless to complete other more important part of stock inspection based
on which three banks had given Rs. 100 crore working capital limits and
our bank had the largest share of 40% being the leader of the consortium
of banks. The other two banks had 30% share each.

Now I had around one and a half hour to inspect stocks of raw materials,
stock in process, the finished goods and consumables against the value
of which banks had given the credit line. The drawing power is the
maximum amount the borrower can draw against the value of stocks and
receivables of the company subject to ceiling of credit line fixed. It was

226 | A Banker down the Rabbit Hole