Update, 3:30pm, 29 March
Following the publication of The Ken’s story on 28 March, the Adani Group released a media statement late in the evening on the same day. This statement was shared with the stock exchanges and The Ken on the morning of 29 March.
Though The Adani Group did not respond to The Ken on specific questions that had been sent to them 24 hours prior to publication of the story, we are addressing the points made in their press release in good faith.
The conglomerate maintained in the media statement that “it has completed full prepayment of margin linked share backed financing aggregating to USD 2.15 billion” and that “all corresponding shares pledged for those facilities have been released.”
Responding to the claim in the story that lenders have not released a “large portion of (Adani Group) promoters’ shares”, the media statement said: “As per the present rules, any share pledge or release is automatically reported by system driven disclosure (SDD) mechanism of the depository participant, and no separate filing is required to be made.”
While the BSE website does currently reflect the updated SDD details pertaining to Adani Enterprises, Adani Green Energy, Adani Transmission and Adani Ports, the time stamp for “exchange broadcast date and time” for these latest disclosures is post 5.30 pm on 28 March. The Ken’s story was published 9.5 hours earlier, at 8 am on the same day.
In response to the data published in the story on the promoters’ pledged stake in Adani Green Energy Ltd (6.9%), Adani Enterprises Ltd (2.7%), Adani Transmission Ltd (8.1%), and Adani Ports Ltd (10.8%) as on 27 March, the statement provided revised numbers for the same.
The Ken had calculated the pledged stake as on 27 March based on the available SAST disclosures on the BSE website. Our story was subsequently published at 8 a.m on 28 March. As we have mentioned earlier, the SDD page was updated with additional disclosures about pledged Adani group shares 9.5 hours after the story was published. Nonetheless, we have now revised the chart in the story with the latest figures to reflect newer information.
Finally, our story said that the two tranches of loan repayments, in February and March, amounted to roughly ~$2 billion, while a press release later in March put the figure at $2.15 billion. In response to this, the Adani Group’s media statement said that after the first two tranches, there was an “incremental prepayment” of $134 million. Once again, we’ve updated the story in light of this new information.
We’ve also amended the headline and strap of the story to accurately reflect information that has come to light post-publication.
To say that 2023 did not start well for the energy-to-ports conglomerate Adani Group would be an understatement.
