'Deliberate Effort To Attempt To Paint Adani Family, Group In The Worst Possible Light': Adani On 'Inaccurate' Report

The group on Monday shared a letter sent to the FT following its publication of the article which contained fundamental misunderstandings of prior Adani Group disclosures, and resultant inaccuracies in the story

Adani Group said the Financial Times’ report claiming it only reveals a willingness to be selective in using publicly available facts, is lazy in its approach to understanding disclosures, and makes insinuations that are false and damaging.

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Adani Group has  on Monday issued a clarification on a report by the Financial Times (FT), saying the article – ‘Indian Data Reveals Adani empire’s reliance on offshore funding’ – is a mendacious, deliberate effort to attempt to paint the Adani family and the Adani Group in the worst possible light.

The group on Monday shared a letter sent to the FT following its publication of the article which contained fundamental misunderstandings of prior Adani Group disclosures, and resultant inaccuracies in the story. According to letter, Adani Group targets the Financial Times’ report claiming it only reveals a willingness to be selective in using publicly available facts, is lazy in its approach to understanding disclosures, and makes insinuations that are false and damaging.

“Our statement to your reporter, that all the transactions about which the Financial Times inquired have been publicly disclosed, is accurate, and the story amply demonstrates that your reporters conveniently chose not to look in a meaningful way at those public disclosures or even at the related press releases (including ones that the Financial Times covered at the time). If your reporters had fully taken into account all of those filings and other disclosures, they would have been simply unable to include – with any honesty – their subjective epithets about “hard-to-scrutinise money flows”, “opaque overseas investments” and “funds of unclear provenance,” the group said.

The conglomerate pointed out that as publicly disclosed on January 18, 2021 and January 23 2021, Adani Group’s promoters raised $2 billion through the sale of a 20 per cent stake in Adani Green Energy Ltd (AGEL) to TotalEnergies of France (then Total Renewables SAS), a fact the Financial Times contemporaneously reported but chose to ignore completely in the March 22, 2023 report.

Further, in October 2019, the promoters had raised $700 million through the sale of a 37.4 per cent stake in Adani Total Gas Ltd, a fact published in an Adani press release. “Again, the Financial Times chose to ignore this fact in its report, although it did publish the news at that time,” the company said, while adding these funds were reinvested by promoter entities to support the growth of new business and in portfolio companies such as Adani Enterprises Ltd, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd, Adani Transmission Ltd, and Adani Power Ltd.

“The promoter entities have had substantial holdings in Adani companies, which have increased over time. It is through the timely use of funds received through the sale of equity that these entities have been able to increase their investments. Of note, the Adani family deployed its returns from the secondary sale to make additional purchases of AGEL equity and to provide support to AGEL via a shareholder loan and other securities – all also in the public domain,” the release said.

We understand the competitive race to tear down Adani can be alluring. But we are fully compliant with securities laws and are not obscuring promoter ownership and financing.  Through the creation of a misleading narrative, your story has created reputational impact on Adani Group companies. We ask you to take down the story immediately from your website. Further, because this story has driven misunderstanding in the market and with other media, and has become a political issue, we are compelled to share this information publicly at this time. That is regrettable, but could have been avoided by your reporters taking a careful and objective approach.

In last week of March, Adani Group also denied a news report published by The Ken, a digital publication, which claims that the conglomerate has not repaid its $2.15 billion share-backed debt. In a release, the group has strongly refuted these charges stating this claim as baseless and deliberately mischievous. In its reply, Adani Group said that the firm has completed full prepayment of margin-linked share-backed financing totalling to $2.15 billion and all corresponding shares pledged for those facilities have been released.

Meanwhile, all 10-listed Adani stocks, including ACC, Ambuja Cements and NDTV, were trading in the green. Shares of Adani Transmission, Adani Total Gas, and Adani Green Energy were locked in the upper price bands of 5 per cent, respectively.