In one week, billionaire Gautam Adani has announced nearly $15 billion in investment commitments across its ports, mining and flagship businesses.
The string of announcements signals that the group helmed by Asia’s richest person is back on the front foot after drawing a line under its US regulatory and legal woes. It also shows the conglomerate is rapidly regaining ground with investors, including US-based banks who will now have a free hand to do business with one of India’s most important conglomerates.
Adani Enterprises, the parent of the ports-to-power group, upsized its share sale by 50 per cent to ₹15,000 crore from the planned ₹10,000 crore after the share sale attracted bids worth about ₹38,000 crore, or 3.8 times the original issue size.
The sale saw marquee American investors like The Capital Group, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Vanguard Group and BlackRock, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.
The successful share sale, where the order book was fully filled up before the launch, was announced less than a day after the company signed a pact with Abu Dhabi’s International Holding Co to invest $11.5 billion in an aluminium project in eastern India.
“The Adani group appears to have decisively shifted from defence to offence,” said Sunil Chandiramani, Mumbai-based CEO of Nyka Advisory Services. “The flurry of capital raising and strategic investments indicates that global investors are once again willing to back the group’s long-term infrastructure story.”
A euphoric share rally this year has added more than $40 billion to the group market value. The combined market value of nine Adani firms has surged past $202 billion, according to Bloomberg data.