Adani Group’s chief financial officer on Tuesday rejected a report that claimed the conglomerate had not paid all its loans against promoters’ shares. In a tweet, CFO Jugeshinder Singh suggested that data will be updated on the exchanges after the end of the current quarter. He said the report could have simply seen the group’s public disclosure on the payments “and would have easily verified that all margin loans of the promoters have been paid in full”.
The response came hours after a report by the digital website, The Ken, raised questions on whether the energy-to-ports conglomerate had actually repaid debt totaling $2.15 billion. The report claimed that the embattled group only reduced the loan amount through a partial repayment to avoid pledging more shares and further action against it by lenders. It alleged that following the Adani Group’s prepayment announcement, banks have only released the pledged shares of Adani Ports.
Earlier this month, Adani Group announced that it had prepaid $2.16 billion of share-backed financing, which it said was consistent with promoters’ commitment to prepay all share-backed financing before 31 March 2023. In a statement on March 7, the group said it had prepaid share-backed financing of Rs 7,374 crore ($902 million) ahead of its latest maturity in April 2025.
With this repayment, the group said domestic and international banks will release 155 million shares – representing 11.8 per cent of the promoters’ holding – of Adani Ports, 31 million shares of Adani Enterprises, 31 million shares of Adani Transmission, and 11 million shares of Adani Green Energy Limited.
However, the report published today claimed that the banks had released shares of only one group firm, Adani Ports. The report claimed that the rest of the shares were yet to be released by lenders. Rejecting this claim, the Adani CFO said: “The deliberate subterfuge will be clear to all once exchanges update the data post end of quarter.”
A normal professional journalist could have simply seen our public disclosure on the payments and would have easily verified that all margin loans of the promoter’s have been paid in full.
Based on the news report, stock exchanges – NSE and BSE – on Tuesday sought clarification from Adani Group on its loan repayment.
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