Adani Group calls report by Financial Times as inaccurate; claims selective use of facts

Adani Group on Monday released its letter to the Editor of Financial Times claiming that the article contained fundamental misunderstanding of prior Adani Group disclosures and resultant inaccuracies in the story, the company announced through an exchange filing.

In the letter the company says the report is 'a mendacious, deliberate effort to attempt to paint the Adani family and the Adani Group in the worst possible light.' The company has also said that the publication was selective in using public facts available and was lazy in its approach to understand disclosures to which the reports were directed. The company also said that the insinuations in the reports are false and damaging.

Selective reporting

The company in the letter to the editor said, "Our statement to your reporter, that all the transactions about which the Financial Times inquired have been publicly disclosed, is accurate, and the story amply demonstrates that your reporters conveniently chose not to look in a meaningful way at those public disclosures or even at the related press releases (including ones that the Financial Times covered at the time).

If your reporters had fully taken into account all of those filings and other disclosures, they would have been simply unable to include – with any honesty – their subjective epithets about “hard-to-scrutinise money flows”, “opaque overseas investments” and “funds of unclear provenance.” "

Instances of fundraising missed

It also mentioned instances where the company had raised money through the sale of stakes, which included the sale of Adani Green Energy and Adani Total Gas Limited shares in 2021 and 2019 respectively.

Mixing of primary and secondary investments

Adani Group has also stated that the report has incorrectly mixed primary and secondary investments and ignored the secondary transactions of $ 2 billion in order to show a gap of $2 billion to support the reports thesis of round-tripping. The group further added that the report contradicts itself when it talks about offshore funding as in one paragraph the report claims that the offshore accounts are the company's promoters then they call them as obscure entities.

The company in the end said, "We understand the competitive race to tear down Adani can be alluring. But we are fully compliant with securities laws and are not obscuring promoter ownership and financing. Through the creation of a misleading narrative, your story has created a reputational impact on Adani Group companies. We ask you to take down the story immediately from your website. Further, because this story has driven misunderstanding in the market and with other media, and has become a political issue, we are compelled to share this information publicly at this time. That is regrettable, but could have been avoided by your reporters taking a careful and objective approach."

Letter to the Editor of Financial Times by Adani Group:

Published on: Monday, April 10, 2023, 12:38 PM IST