Morepen defaults on FDs; hit by slump in Loratadine prices

Chennai: Fixed depositors of Morepen Laboratories can keep their fingers crossed while waiting for the courier to deliver their matured fixed deposit cheques.

For, the New Delhi-based company has been defaulting on payment of matured fixed deposits since February 2003. Further, the company''s interest warrants are bouncing back to the depositors like rubber balls.

Anil Khandelwal, vice president (finance), says: "It''s true that there were few occasions when fixed deposit repayments as well as interest warrants were returned by one of our banks for want of sufficient funds. This had happened primarily due to delayed high value clearing and few technical delays in transfer of funds to the respective bank accounts." According to him the issue has been completely addressed and there is no outstanding on this account while the issue of fixed deposit repayments are being addressed to on a day-to-day basis. Even most of this stands cleared as of now.

In January 2003, when Morepen''s interest warrants were dishonoured by ICICI Bank, the company switched its account to Corporation Bank (See ).

While many investors got worried about the non-receipt of deposit proceeds upon maturity or any related communication, Khandelwal insists that Morepen has been communicating with its investors to minimise the complaints on this account.

It is learnt that the company held an investors'' meet in Mumbai recently and plans to have similar ones in Ahmedabad, Chennai and Bangalore.