Mumbai: A write-off from six years ago has come back to the door. Yes Bank has received a notice from Axis Trusteeship seeking the restoration and reactivation of ₹8,415 crore of additional tier-1 (AT1) bonds that were written off in March 2020.
The notice is dated October 28, 2026. It follows the Supreme Court upholding a Bombay High Court ruling that set aside the write-off. According to details of the notice, the trustee has given the bank three working days to reinstate the bonds.
What the trustee wants is specific. It has sought reversal of the write-off entries with the National Securities Depository Limited and the Central Depository Services Limited, and restoration of the bonds on the BSE and the NSE. It has also asked Yes Bank for clarity on unpaid coupon payments on the 9% and 9.5% AT1 bonds, and for a timeline for completing its assessment of the Supreme Court ruling and implementing the judgment.
There is a warning attached. The trustee has said it is examining legal options if implementation is delayed. Separately, it has called a meeting of bondholders on November 16.
Yes Bank has not commented on the notice.
The bonds sit at the centre of one of the more contested episodes in Indian banking. AT1 instruments are designed to absorb losses, and the write-off wiped out retail and institutional holders who had bought them believing they were debt. The courts have now taken a different view of how that was done.
The market has already voted. Yes Bank shares have fallen about 26% in October and touched a multi-year low. On Friday the stock closed at ₹15.20, down about 1.5%.
Restoring the bonds is not a bookkeeping exercise. Reversing entries at both depositories and relisting on two exchanges means the bank's capital structure has to be restated, and unpaid coupons become a liability that has to be quantified. For bondholders, the question is whether the paper comes back, and whether the interest that was never paid comes with it.
For the bank, the clock is short. Three working days from a notice dated October 28 runs into the first week of November, and the November 16 bondholder meeting gives both sides a date to work towards. The bigger number, though, is the one nobody has put on paper yet: what the coupons and any compensation will cost.