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Tag: Gautam Adani

  • Adani Group strikes $1.87bn US deal

    Adani Group strikes $1.87bn US deal

    The troubled corporate empire of Indian multi-billionaire Gautam Adani claims to have received investment of $1.87 billion (£1.6 billion) from a US asset management company.

    Adani informed investors that GQG Partners, based in Florida, had purchased stock in four of the group’s subsidiaries.

    Since been accused by short-seller Hindenburg Research with stock market manipulation and financial fraud, this is the company’s first significant investment that has been made public.

    The claims have been refuted by Adani Group.

    After Hindenburg Research’s research was released on January 24, the value of the seven Adani Group firms that are listed on the stock market has reportedly decreased by an estimated $135 billion.

    The GQG investment will be split across four Adani companies, including flagship firm Adani Enterprises.

    “This transaction marks the continued confidence of global investors in the governance, management practices and the growth of Adani portfolio of companies,” said Adani Group’s chief financial officer Jugeshinder Singh.

    “We value GQG’s role as a strategic investor in our infrastructure and utility portfolio of sustainable energy, logistics and energy transition,” Mr Singh added.

    Rajiv Jain, chairman and chief investment officer at GQG, said he believed the “long-term growth prospects for these companies are substantial”.

    He added that Mr Adani was “widely regarded as among the best entrepreneurs of his generation.”

    In a separate regulatory filing, Adani Enterprises denied media reports that the conglomerate had secured $3bn in credit from a sovereign wealth fund.

    “We would like to clarify that the said news item appears to be a market rumour and hence it would be inappropriate on our part to comment on it,” the firm said.

    Earlier on Thursday, India’s Supreme Court said it had appointed an independent panel to investigate US short-seller Hindenburg Research’s allegations against Adani Group firms.

    The firm alleged that Adani companies had engaged in decades of “brazen” stock manipulation and accounting fraud.

    It also claimed the companies had “substantial debt” which put the entire group on a “precarious financial footing”.

    Short-selling is betting that the value of an asset will fall.

    Adani Group has denied the allegations, calling them an “attack on India”. It had previously said that the Hindenburg report was intended to enable the US-based short seller to book gains, without citing evidence.

    Mr Adani’s group has seven publicly-traded companies which operate across a wide range of sectors, including commodities trading, airports, utilities, ports and renewable energy.

  • Indian opposition is detained after allegedly criticising PM Modi

    Indian opposition is detained after allegedly criticising PM Modi

    A senior Congress party official in India has been detained on charges of insulting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

    Following his alleged reference to troubled businessman Gautam Adani when he named Modi “Narendra Gautamdas Modi,” Pawan Khera was detained at the Delhi Airport along with other party members.

    Last month, following a report by financial research and short seller firm Hindenburg Research levied accusations of stock market manipulation and fraud on the Adani Group, Adani, one of the richest individuals in the world, had his net worth decrease by half in less than two weeks.
    The Adani Group criticised the research, calling it “malicious” and “baseless.”

    Adani is seen as a close ally of Modi.

    In recent months, Modi has been accused of silencing his critics after the country banned a documentary from the BBC that was critical of the prime minister’s alleged role in deadly riots more than 20 years ago.

    Indian tax authorities raided the BBC’s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai earlier this month citing “irregularities and discrepancies” in the BBC’s taxes. The BBC defended its documentary and said it was complying with the tax investigation.

    Police from the state of Assam said they had deployed a team to New Delhi to arrest Khera for questioning after a case was registered on Wednesday for his “objectionable remarks about the Prime Minister.”

    “[Khera] was trying to disturb the communal harmony in the society, sections of the Indian Penal Code under criminal conspiracy,” Prasanta Kumar Bhuyan, Assam police spokesperson, told CNN.

    On Thursday, India’s Supreme Court ordered Khera to be released on interim bail. CNN has not yet been able to reach Khera and his lawyers.

    The Congress party labeled Khera’s arrest as “undemocratic,” saying in a statement, “We vehemently oppose this dictatorial behavior.”

  • India’s BJP blasts Soros comments over Adani crisis, says will weaken Modi

    India’s BJP blasts Soros comments over Adani crisis, says will weaken Modi

    The philanthropist-financier anticipated that the Adani Group’s troubles would weaken the Hindu nationalist leader’s hold on power.

    The party of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has charged billionaire financier and philanthropist George Sor

    os with attempting to undermine the country’s democracy by speculating that the difficulties facing the Adani Group would weaken the Hindu nationalist leader’s hold on power.

    The Financial Times reported that 92-year-old George Soros, who was speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Thursday, claimed that business tycoon Adani and Prime Minister Modi “are close allies; their fates are intertwined” and that the conglomerate’s problems would “significantly weaken Modi’s stranglehold on India’s federal government” and “open the door to push for much needed institutional reforms.”

    The seven listed companies of the apples-to-airports Adani Group have together lost about $120bn in market value since a January 24 report by Hindenburg Research alleged the conglomerate improperly used offshore tax havens and manipulated stock, and flagged concerns over its high debt levels.

    Modi’s opponents say he has longstanding ties with Gautam Adani, the founder of the group, going back nearly two decades to when Modi was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat.

    They also accuse the government of favouring the group in business deals, charges the government has rejected as “wild allegations”.

    “A foreign power at the centre of which is a man named George Soros has announced that he will hurt India’s democratic structure. He has announced that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be his main target. He has also announced that he will help build a system in India that will protect his interests, not India’s,” Smriti Irani, the federal minister for women and child development, told reporters at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) office.

    “This is not just an attempt to hurt India’s image. If you listen to him carefully, he talks of regime change,” she said. “India has always defeated foreign powers whenever it was challenged and will continue to defeat them in the future too.”

    Modi has not referred to Adani by name since the crisis triggered by the Hindenburg report, but last week he told parliament that the “blessings of 1.4 billion people in the country are my protective cover and you can’t destroy it with lies and abuses”, as opposition legislators chanted “Adani, Adani”.

  • NDTV: How Gautam Adani plans to run India’s leading news network

    The founders of leading Indian news network New Delhi Television (NDTV), Radhika and Prannoy Roy, have resigned as directors of a group promoting their company, bringing a conglomerate led by Gautam Adani, one of the world’s richest men, closer to acquiring the media firm. The BBC investigates what this means for the future of Indian television news.

    Radhika Roy once said that the creation of NDTV with her broadcaster husband Prannoy Roy was a “happy accident.”

    In November 1988, the Roys launched NDTV with a single show, The World This Week, on the bland state-run Doordarshan with “no grand plan” in mind and “certainly no idea” that it would grow from being a producer of a weekly world news show to India’s first 24/7 news network and independent news broadcaster.

    More than three decades later, the couple’s news channel is changing hands. Gautam Adani, the third richest man in the world – behind Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos – is set to buy NDTV in one the world’s most tumultuous media markets.

    Mr Adani, a 60-year-old billionaire who runs a port-to-energy conglomerate, is seen by many as someone close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government. Truth to tell, his “relationship with political and social leaders, across all types of party lines, have made him acceptable to every government,” according to RN Bhaskar, author of a recently published biography of the tycoon.

    In March, Mr Adani’s new company AMG Media Networks Limited bought a minority stake in Quintillion, a digital business news company. “The Quintillion investment is too meagre to demand Mr Adani’s attention. So, does he have bigger plans?” wondered Mr Bhaskar in his book.

    Gautam Adani
    IMAGE SOURCE,AFP Image caption, Gautam Adani, the world’s third richest man, bought a small stake in a digital business media company earlier this year

    Now we know. With revenues of around $51m and a modest profit of $10m, NDTV may not be a lucrative buy for Mr Adani, whose sprawling group has a market capitalisation of $260bn.

    But NDTV is India’s best-known network that pioneered data-driven vote analysis, morning shows, and a host of tech and lifestyle programmes on TV. Today, it has a robust online presence, claiming some 35 million followers across platforms.

    NDTV, the Adani group believes, is “the most suitable broadcast and digital platform to deliver on our vision”. Mr Adani has offered some clues about what the vision is. “Why can’t you support one media house to become independent and have a global footprint? India does not have one single [outlet] to compare to Financial Times or Al Jazeera,” he told the Financial Times.

    Critics of the sale are more sceptical. Many regard NDTV as one of India’s few independent news networks, which has stayed away from the shouty jingoism of many of its peers. A study by Oxford University and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that 76% of respondents trust information from NDTV.

    Mr Adani’s takeover has sparked concerns that this would hurt its editorial integrity. Despite the diversity of media choices, independent journalism in India doesn’t appear to be in fine fettle: the country dropped to 150 of 180 countries ranked in Paris-based Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index this year, its lowest position ever. Mr Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rejects the findings, saying the index adopts a methodology that is both “questionable and non-transparent”.

    Prannoy Roy, Co-founder and Executive Co-Chairperson of New Delhi Television (NDTV), poses for a profile shoot during an interview at his office on March 14, 2014
    IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES Image caption, Prannoy Roy and his wife Radhika founded NDTV 34 years ago

    The diversity of media also masks the concentration of ownership, say experts. Four daily newspapers, for example, share three quarters of the readership in Hindi, according to Reporters Without Borders. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani, who owns a $220bn retail-to-refining conglomerate, also controls Network18, one of India’s largest media companies. Companies owned by Mr Adani and Mr Ambani generate revenues equivalent to 4% of India’s GDP.

    The takeover of NDTV is also symbolic of the troubles plaguing the news business in India, says Vanita Kohli-Khandekar, a media specialist. India has more than 400 news channels in a market that is mostly privately owned and in regional languages. News channels mopped up an estimated 8% of the $423m that TV advertising got in 2021.

    “News is one of the toughest business to be in, anywhere,” says Ms Kohli-Khandekar. “In India, TV news is one of the most unprofitable, politically perilous and dodgy businesses to be in.” Just “two to three companies” make money from time to time, she adds.

    Since people are largely not willing to pay for news, advertising accounts for a bulk of revenues for the channels. Many believe the credibility of networks has waned: many have been accused of fiddling with ratings and what an expert called the “grotesque tabloidization” of news, and partisan coverage.

    Office of New Delhi Television (NDTV) on March 14, 2014 in New Delhi, India.
    IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES Image caption, NDTV pioneered a lot of TV news programming in India, including election analysis

    NDTV’s own financial woes began during an economic downturn more than a decade ago when it had to borrow $44m from a company controlled by Mr Ambani’s Reliance Industries to refinance existing debts. “NDTV has struggled long and hard and it seems to be losing the fight. For the business of journalism it seems like a defeat,” says Ms Kohli-Khandekar.

    Time will tell whether the editorial content and tenor of the network will change under the new ownership. At a time when TV news is polarised, NDTV was “more left-of-the centre and did stories critical of the government which most others were not taking up,” says Shailesh Kapoor of Ormax Media, a media consultancy. “Will they now soften their stand and move to a more neutral position because of editorial restrictions?”

    Mr Adani believes there’s nothing to fear. “Independence means if government has done something wrong, you say it’s wrong,” he told Financial Times. “But at the same time, you should have courage when the government is doing the right thing. You have to also say that.”

  • World second-richest person: Indian tycoon oust Jeff Bezos

    The second-richest person in the world, Jeff Bezos, has just dropped to third place as Indian business tycoon Gautam Adani rapidly advances up Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.

    With $260 billion in his bank account, Elon Musk, who is still the richest person in the world, may need to be careful.

    After beginning the year in position 14, Adani climbed from there to position 2 in less than ten months.

    Since white tech entrepreneurs have long dominated Bloomberg’s list, a person from Asia has never placed so high on the list.

    Adani’s $146.9 billion fortune, largely tied up in holdings of his sprawling Adani Group conglomerate, still trails well behind Musk’s $260 billion. The group operates a range of businesses including ports and coal that have thrived in recent years.
    Shares of some Adani companies have jumped more than 1,000% since June 2020 — reflecting investor optimism about the conglomerate’s strength in areas like infrastructure and renewable energy that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has prioritized for development. Shares of his flagship Adani Enterprises are up more than 115% in 2022.
    In February, Adani overtook fellow Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani to become Asia’s wealthiest person.
    Bezos’s net worth slumped to $145.8 billion, according to Bloomberg, as tech stocks were hit hard amid a broader equities selloff Friday. Amazon shares fell 3% in early trading, and the stock is down more than 25% this year.
    The Amazon founder previously ranked No. 1 on the list, but his wealth took a hit after his 2019 divorce. Much of his wealth is tied up in Amazon stock. According to Bloomberg, the tech selloff has shaved $45 billion off Bezos’ net worth since January.