Exiting Hospitality Business Offers No Guarantee For Vascon Engineers Honcho From Union Bank

An advertisement in a newspaper, issued by the Credit Recovery and Legal Service Department of the public-sector Union Bank of India, announces an e-auction of immovable property at Mahalunge in Pune district to recover loans totalling Rs 52.74 crore. The property, around 1.27 hectare, is being auctioned because of borrowings by Viorica (sic) Hotels, which operated the erstwhile Hotel Holiday Inn — now Hotel Ramada – at Hinjewadi on the city’s outskirts. The ad names four personal (which the bank spells ‘personnel’) guarantors and, five corporate guarantors, headed by Vascon Engineers. “We will not be affected by this,” says Vascon founder chairman R Vasudevan, whose son Siddharth is among those named in the notice. “I don’t know why they are still dragging us into it. We got out of the hotel business five years ago, when we sold the property to Maruti Navale, formerly of Singhgad Institutes.” Navale and his Neemco Traders are also named in the notice.  Vascon, which got into the hospitality sector in 2006-07, exited it because, as Vasudevan had explained then, this was a specialised job which did not fit into their specialisation of construction. The company held stakes in three hotels in Pune — Holiday Inn, Hyatt Regency and Golden Suites — and two in Goa, Galaxy Resort and Vista Do Ria.