India. UB says not interested in buying Kingfisher brand

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United Breweries, who was seen as a likely candidate to buy the Kingfisher Airline brand, has said that it is not interested in owning the carrier’s label, according to media reports.

“United Breweries owns the Kingfisher beer and water brands, and the airline brand holds no relevance to us,” the company’s Managing Director Shekhar Ramamurthy has been quoted as saying.
United Breweries’s Dutch promoter Heineken too has said that it is not interested in buying the Kingfisher Airline brand, reports a national daily.

Lenders to Kingfisher Airlines, which has been grounded since October 2012, are looking to recover dues worth INR 9,000 crore through sale of its assets, including the carrier’s brand.
Meanwhile, reports say that an evaluation done by the lenders through RBSA Advisors in 2013 found the valuation of the Kingfisher brand to be around INR 200 crore, or 5 per cent of the valuation done by Grant Thornton.

Another valuation done in 2015 pegged its value at INR 100 crore, according to reports.

Banks had relied on Grant Thornton’s high valuation of the Kingfisher Airlines brand and associated trademarks while funding the Vijay Mallya-promoted carrier.

According to RBSA, the rights that have been assigned to the banks are only pertaining to ‘Kingfisher’ registered under the Class 39 under the Trade Marks Act, 1999.

Class 39 broadly refers to transport, packaging & storage of goods, travel arrangement, etc.

The banks do not have any right over the intangibles or brands of Kingfisher Beer and beverage business category.