Indian billionaire Gautam Adani is close to selling a $2.5 billion stake in Adani Enterprises via IPO on Tuesday, as investors plowed cash in after a tumultuous week for his group. Its shares plunged After a report, the group faced harsh criticism.
Shares of Adani Enterprises were sold with 93% of the shares completed on Tuesday, Indian stock exchange data showed. A stake or shares of at least 90% were required to be sold in order for the transaction to proceed.
By today, Tuesday, the subscription to the offering was fully covered, with an influx of foreign institutional investors and corporate funds, but the participation of individual investors and Adani Enterprises employees was low.
Selling the shares is critical for Adani, not only because it will help reduce debt, but also because its success will be seen as a stamp of confidence by investors at a time when the businessman is facing one of the biggest challenges in terms of his business, in addition to reputational ones. lately.
This comes after the scathing report from the company “Hindenburg Research” and despite a long response from the founder, “Gautam Adani” to the allegations of the American company, which he accused of fraud.
And the shares of a number of companies affiliated with the Adani Group continued their decline today, so that the losses of the market value of the group companies exceeded $ 75 billion during four sessions.
The collapse in stock value that followed wiped out a surprisingly large portion of his wealth, dropping him from third to eighth place on the Forbes list of the richest.
India’s largest secondary stock sale attracted participation from major investors, including MyBank Securities, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and others.
Adani Group’s total debt in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2022 rose by 40%, to 2.2 trillion rupees ($26.83 billion).