Suzlon: a debt-funded €1.4bn German buy that ended in India's biggest bond default

Founded in 1995 by Tulsi Tanti, Suzlon Energy grew into India's biggest wind-turbine maker and the world's fifth-largest. In 2007, at the top of the wind boom, it bought German turbine maker REpower — later renamed Senvion — for €1.4 billion ($1.56 billion), a purchase financed largely with borrowed money.

The 2008 global financial crisis then dented demand for wind turbines worldwide, and the debt taken on to fund the acquisition badly hurt Suzlon. Total borrowings reached about 140 billion rupees (roughly $2.6 billion). In October 2012 bondholders rejected a four-month extension on more than $200 million of foreign-currency convertible debt — India's biggest corporate default of its kind.

A month later Suzlon agreed with its lenders to restructure nearly $2 billion of domestic loans, including a two-year holiday on interest and principal. In 2013 it formally entered corporate debt restructuring (CDR), the Indian process under which companies work with banks to reschedule loans; lenders required the promoters to inject fresh equity of their own.

In August 2016 the chairman said Suzlon would exit CDR by March 2017, calling it the fastest such exit in India — a turnaround for a company that had reeled under heavy debt for four years.