Adani Group recently refuted claims that the conglomerate had not paid all its loans against promoters’ shares.
This came after the company’s chief financial officer (CFO) rejected the claim on Twitter. The company said, “Adani has completed full prepayment of margin linked share backed financing aggregating to USD 2.15 billion and all corresponding shares pledged for those facilities have been released.”
Adani Group CFO Jugeshinder Singh had tweeted that the data will be updated on the exchanges after the end of the current quarter. He had said that 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 from Adani Group’s CFO came following a report by the digital website ‘The Ken’, which questioned whether the conglomerate had actually repaid debts amounting to USD 2.15 billion. The report also claimed that the embattled group only reduced the loan amount by partially paying off to avoid pledging more shares and further action against it by promoters.
The report further alleged that after Adani Group’s prepayment announcement, banks have only released the pledged shares of Adani Ports.
Adani Group had announced earlier in March that it had prepaid USD 2.16 billion of share-backed loans, which it said was consistent with promoters’ commitment to prepay all share-backed financing before March 31, 2023.
On March 12, Adani Group had said in a statement that it had completed full prepayment of margin linked share backed financing aggregating to USD 2.15 billion, before the committed timeline of March 31.
The statement mentioned that the group had prepaid share-backed financing of Rs 7,374 crore (USD 902 million) ahead of its latest maturity in April 2025. With that , the group said domestic and foreign banks will release 155 million shares, worth around 11.8 per cent of promoters’ holding of Adani Ports, Adani Enterprises (31 million shares), Adani Transmission (31 million shares) and Adani Green Energy Limited (11 million shares).
However, the report from ‘The Ken’ mentioned that the banks had only released shares of one of the group’s firm, that is, Adani Ports. The report further claimed that the rest of the shares were yet to be released by lenders.
Adani Group CFO rejected this claim saying, “The deliberate subterfuge will be clear to all once exchanges update the data post end of quarter.”
Based on the report, stock exchanges NSE and BSE also sought clarification from Adani Group on its loan repayment.
