Adani Group clarifies on FT report: ‘not hiding promoter ownership and financing’

One of India's largest conglomerates, the Adani Group, has responded to a recent Financial Times (FT) report that claimed the group had concealed its promoter ownership and financing. The news caused a dramatic decline in the group's stock price by raising questions about the openness of the group's business transactions.

After a London newspaper claimed that offshore entities connected to the embattled billionaire's family provided nearly half of all foreign direct investment into the Adani Group, the conglomerate today insisted they are not hiding promoter ownership and financing.

According to a Financial Times report published last month, the Adani Group received at least $2.6 billion in investments from offshore firms connected to the Adanis between 2017 and 2022, or 45.4% of the more than $5.7 billion in FDI the company received overall during that time.

According to the article of March 22, 2023, titled "Indian Data Shows Adani empire's Reliance on Offshore Funding," is a dishonest attempt to portray the Adani family and the Adani Group in the worst possible light. By doing so, it exhibits a propensity for selective use of information that is already in the public domain, is sloppy in its comprehension of disclosures to which your reporters were led, and makes false and damaging implication.
Promoter companies used these funds to reinvest in portfolio companies like Adani Enterprises Ltd, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd, Adani Transmission Ltd, and Adani Power Ltd. as well as to support the growth of new enterprises.

We comprehend how tempting the drive to demolish Adani can be. However, Adani Group stated in a letter to the foreign media outlet asking them to remove the piece with a "misleading narrative" that they are fully in compliance with securities rules and are not hiding promoter ownership and finance.

In October 2019, the promoters of Adani Total Gas Ltd. sold a 37.4% part of the company, raising USD 700 million, according to a press release from Adani. Even while it did at the time publish the news, the Financial Times once more made the decision to ignore this information in their story.

In order for the reporters to neatly fabricate a USD 2 billion "gap in funding" to justify their preconceived thesis of purported round-tripping, your story erroneously combined primary and secondary investments and completely overlooked a secondary transaction for USD 2 billion. After accounting for the AGEL equity proceeds, all of that disappears.

Concerns about the "round-tripping" of money from Mauritius entities had been raised in the FT report. "Via a series of modest and frequent investments, related shell businesses provided 25% of the FDI flows into the Adani group of enterprises. Recently, the transactions have gotten bigger and less frequent "It had stated.