NDTV founders to divest majority stake to Adani Group

The founders of New Delhi Television (NDTV), Radhika Roy and Prannoy Roy, will divest majority of their stake in the company to Adani Group company AMG Media Network, they said in a release.

Following the recent open offer launched by the Adani Group, AMG Media Network is the single-largest shareholder in NDTV.

“With mutual agreement, we have decided to divest most of our shares in NDTV to the AMG Media Network,” the founders said in the release.

Adani Group had launched an open offer for acquiring an additional 26% stake in NDTV following the takeover deal it had announced in August.

On November 28, NDTV promoter company RRPR Holding issued shares constituting 99.5% of the equity share capital to Adani Group company Vishvapradhan Commercial, itself holding 29.18% stake in NDTV.

Further, Adani Enterprises bought an additional 8.3% stake in the news broadcaster through the open offer.

Following this, Adani Enterprises became the largest shareholder with a 37.44% stake in NDTV, surpassing founders Radhika Roy and Prannoy Roy’s cumulative holding of 32.26% stake.

In August, Adani made a backdoor entry by acquiring Vishvapradhan Commercial, a company that had lent money to the NDTV promoters over a decade ago.

Adani Enterprises further converted the loan that was given to RRPR Holding into equity, which translated into a 29.18% stake in the promoter group entity.

Following this, Adani Enterprises announced plans to acquire a majority stake in NDTV and made an open offer.

Miffed by the hostile takeover move, NDTV had alleged that the transaction was executed without any input or consent of the founders.

As a result, there was a delay in the launch of the open offer. However, it sailed through as the open offer received good response from public shareholders.

“Since the open offer was launched, our discussions with Mr. Gautam Adani have been constructive; all the suggestions we made were accepted by him positively and with openness,” NDTV said in the release.

Acquisition of NDTV marks the foray of the Adani Group into the media sector and directly compete with another conglomerate Reliance Industries.

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