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    Adani Group calls The Ken report on loan repayment baseless, mischievous

    Synopsis

    “There has been incremental prepayment of $134 million completed after the press release of 6 Feb 2023 ($1,114 million) and 7 Mar 2023 ($902 million), resulting in the updated debt figure of $2.15 billion for the press release of 12 Mar 2023,” the release has further clarified.

    Adani Group calls The Ken report on loan repayment baseless, mischievousReuters
    Adani Group has debunked The Ken's news report which claimed that the Group has not completed repayment of $2.15 billion in share-backed debt, calling it "baseless and deliberately mischievous". The clarification was issued by the company late Tuesday.

    "The Ken, a digital publication, makes the baseless and deliberately mischievous claim that the Group has not completed repayment of $2.15 billion in share-backed debt. Adani has completed full prepayment of margin linked share backed financing aggregating to $2.15 billion (see our media release of 12 Mar 2023) and all corresponding shares pledged for those facilities have been released," a company release said.

    Company has revealed its share pledge position as on 31 December 2022 and the current share pledge position as on 27 March 2023 (factoring in current stock prices).
    AdaniET CONTRIBUTORS

    The release also talks about the rationale for residual share pledge position.

    • All share backed facilities availed by the promoters have been paid off.

    • After such repayment, ListCo pledge positions for Adani Green, Adani Ports, Adani Transmission & Adani Enterprises have reduced substantially, and only residual share pledges corresponding to Operating Company (OpCo) facilities remained outstanding.

    • OpCo facilities are availed by respective OpCo, and are part of their existing debt structure, and no new OpCo facilities have been availed since the short-seller report.

    • Salient features for residual pledge position (OpCo facilities):

    – OpCo have secured various facilities based on the security of project assets,project cash flow and other such collaterals.

    – In addition to such security, listed shares have been provided as additional collateral for these OpCo liabilities for additional lender comfort.

    – Such facilities do not have covenants like cash margin calls, share price linked put option, etc. which exist in share backed financing.

    All the pledged shares have been released subsequent to prepayments made billion, the Adani Group release said.

    “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. The same has already been updated and is reflected on the NSE website. However, the BSE website has not been updated to reflect the same,” the release said.

    This was in response to the The Ken report’s text which said “Over the last two months, the group has claimed to have repaid about $2.15 billion; it announced, on 12 March, that all of its margin-linked share-backed debt has been paid. However, 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”.

    Sebi stipulates disclosure obligations on pledge or release of 5% or higher number of shares of the company, which in this case is applicable only to Adani Ports and is not applicable to Adani Transmission and Adani Green Energy, the group said.

    Therefore, only Adani Ports’ disclosure has been filed as per Sebi SAST regulations. It may be noted that, as per the media release of 6 Feb 2023, 12% of Adani Ports shares were released (which is higher than 5%) and 3% of Adani Green Energy shares and 1.4% of Adani Transmission shares were released. Accordingly, SAST disclosure was applicable only to Adani Ports.

    “There has been incremental prepayment of $134 million completed after the press release of 6 Feb 2023 ($1,114 million) and 7 Mar 2023 ($902 million), resulting in the updated debt figure of $2.15 billion for the press release of 12 Mar 2023,” the release has further clarified.

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    Download The Economic Times News App to get Daily Market Updates & Live Business News.

    Subscribe to The Economic Times Prime and read the Economic Times ePaper Online.and Sensex Today.

    Top Trending Stocks: SBI Share Price, Axis Bank Share Price, HDFC Bank Share Price, Infosys Share Price, Wipro Share Price, NTPC Share Price

    ...more
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