Mumbai – Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS), the embattled financial services firm, has approached a bankruptcy court to challenge the sale of its prominent Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) building, the IL&FS Centre, to Chronos, a unit backed by global alternative investment giant Brookfield. IL&FS contends that Chronos failed to uphold fundamental bid requirements, specifically by not extending a crucial ₹108-crore performance guarantee that lapsed in April 2025.
IL&FS asserts that this guarantee was a non-negotiable condition outlined in the original 2022 bidding documents and the Letter of Intent (LoI). In its court submission, the company stated, “CPPL [Chronos Property Private Limited, believed to be the Brookfield entity] chose not to renew the performance guarantee post-April 2025, thereby invalidating the LoI and the bid itself.” Consequently, IL&FS has petitioned the tribunal to annul the Letter of Intent and dismiss Chronos’s application as unviable.
This legal maneuver unfolds against a backdrop of appreciating commercial property values in BKC. Sources within the financing sector, privy to IL&FS’s recent appeal to the Mumbai NCLT, indicate that the upswing in asset prices in this prime business district may have rendered Brookfield’s original bid for the IL&FS Centre – once home to HDFC – less favorable for IL&FS. The IL&FS building, recognized for its role in establishing BKC as a modern financial hub in Mumbai, now finds itself at the heart of another significant legal contest involving Brookfield, one of the world’s largest investment managers.
