Adani Group refutes news report claims regarding repayment of loans against share

Adani Group has called out ‘The Ken’ that claimed the company of not repaying USD 2.15 billion in share-backed debt to its promoters. The giant enterprise, in its recent press release, called the Ken's claims in article to be ‘baseless’ and said that all corresponding shares pledged for those facilities have been released.

Adani Group also mentioned its share pledge position as on 31 December 2022 and the current share pledge position as on March 27,2023.

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The company also said the repayment of debts has drastically reduced the pledge positions for Adani Green, Adani Ports, Adani Transmission and Adani Enterprises With this, only residual share pledges associated with Operating Company facilities are left for repayment.

ALso Read: NSE seeks clarification from Adani Enterprises on status of pledge shares

On Tuesday, Adani Group CFO, Jugeshinder Robbie Singh, criticised the digital publication for its deliberate misrepresentation.

"Deliberate misrepresentation ( and if i speculate out right lies) of @TheKenWeb ( @SudzzBTS an @nimishshp) they know that relevant exchanges will update end of quarter. The deliberate subterfuge will be clear to all once exchanges update the data post end of quarter,"tweeted the company CFO on Monday.

Claims made by the publication against Adani

Notably, in its latest article, The Ken had cited Adani group's regulatory filings and claimed the company of not paying a significant portion of the promoters' shares that was held as collateral.

“Regulatory filings examined by The Ken show that banks have not yet released a large portion of its promoters’ shares, as they should have if the loans had indeed been completely repaid. As per Indian laws, disclosures on the release of shares need to be filed with stock exchanges by lenders within two working days, and by promoters within seven working days. But neither the Adani Group nor the lenders have made these disclosures to stock exchanges,” Adani group quoted the Ken's article in its release.

Adani response to the article

Debunking the claims made in the article, the company clarified that all the pledged shares have been released subsequent to prepayments made billion.

“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” said the company in its release.

Adani shares plunge

Adani group stocks plunged the most by value in 23 sessions after a report in The Ken cited regulatory filings to show that banks have not released a significant portion of promoter shares held as collateral. This means the group’s debt hasn’t been fully paid off, against its claims of repaying $2.15 billion in share-backed debt.