IL&FS owns 8 Audis, 6 BMWs, 2 Jaguars and 1 Lexus. They are all on sale

Debt-laden Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) launched an auction to sell its fleet of 36 luxury cars, inviting bids from prospective buyers.

The last date for submission of  the bids is December 18, 2018, according to an advertisement published by the company. The company is also selling guest-house assets including furniture and white goods from one flat in Kolkata and two flats located in Mumbai.

IL&FS, a major infrastructure financing and construction company, defaulted on some of its debt obligations triggering wider concerns about risk in the rest of the country’s financial sector.

The government took control of the company, saying it was needed to protect India’s financial system and markets from potential collapse. It replaced the board of IL&FS with its own nominees.

The newly-appointed board began cutting cost in staffing and some operations to revive the company. The board reduced the maximum expenditure limit for company-owned cars from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 25 lakh.

The fleet of cars includes eight Audis, six BMWs, two Jaguars, 1 Lexus. The most recently bought car in the lot is a BMW X1 registered in the name of IL&FS Rail Ltd in May 2018 and has a base price of Rs 30.09 lakh.

It is unclear why IL&FS required such a large number of luxury cars.

The car with the lowest base price is Honda CRV from IL&FS Financial Services Ltd at Rs 2.59 lakh. Also, Mercedes Benz GLS 350D 4Matic bought by the same company in May 2017 carries the highest base price tag of Rs 54.02 lakh.

It has also cut down salaries by 10 percent of those employees with a cost to company (CTC) of Rs 50 lakh and above and terminated services of 69 employees who had retired but had been retained as consultants.