Billionaire Adani becomes NDTV’s largest shareholder after open offer

Although Adani’s group was looking to pick up a 26% stake in NDTV, the open offer attracted bids for only 5.3 million shares, translating to an 8.3% interest in the company.

Last week, Adani acquired a stake of about 29.2% in NDTV by buying out a company backed by the television network’s founders, Radhika Roy and Prannoy Roy, who hold 32.3% stake in NDTV.

The port-to-energy conglomerate’s takeover of NDTV has sparked fears among some journalists that one of the country’s last bastions of free media is under threat.

Soon after the acquisition of NDTV’s founding entity by Adani, Ravish Kumar, a senior executive editor of NDTV, resigned.

Adani, however, has said that he views the acquisition of NDTV as a “responsibility” rather than a business opportunity, adding that he has invited Prannoy Roy to stay on as chairman when the acquisition is completed. .

In the open offer that ended on Monday, corporate investors offered 3.9 million shares, while retail investors offered to sell 706,000 shares. It was not immediately clear who the participants were.

Adani had offered to buy NDTV shares at Rs 294 in the open offer, representing a discount of 25% to Monday’s closing price.

While a fully successful open offer would mean Adani would have a majority stake in NDTV, the 37.4% stake would still make him the largest shareholder, said Sriram Subramanian, managing director at Bengaluru-based InGovern Research Services, a corporate governance advisory. Firm .

“With the resulting shareholding, they (Adani) can still seek control by reconstituting the board. They can propose their own set of directors and removal of the current directors,” Subramanian said.

Adani unveiled plans in late August to acquire a majority stake in NDTV, but faced strong opposition from the news network, which said the billionaire’s bid had been executed without the consent of the NDTV founders. .

The entity backed by NDTV’s founders last week transferred its entire shareholding to Adani, after an unsuccessful attempt to stall the acquisition citing regulatory restrictions on moving shares.

The text of this story is published from a wire agency feed without any modification.