Two days after the story broke about a New York-based Hindenburg Research’s report placing Adani group in the dock for “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud”, leading newspapers carried front page ads from the group.
Delhi editions of The Indian Express, The Hindu and The Times of India carried full front page ads from the group in English while Maharashtra Times carried the same full page ad in Marathi. Interestingly, Hindustan Times and other newspapers of the HT group had no ads from the group on Saturday.
The Hindu also published another full page from Adani Enterprises Limited carrying a detailed public announcement of their FPO (Follow on Public Offer) with extensive information on its price band and BRLMs (Book Running Lead Manager). FPO or Follow-on Public Offer is a process in which an existing company listed on the stock exchange issues new shares to the existing shareholders or to the new investors, to either raise additional capital or to reduce the existing debt of the company.
In the past two days, the Adani group has seen a sharp decline in share prices of their firms with a decline of over 4 lakh crore in their market cap. You can read Newslaundry’s report on how the media covered this shock to the premier Indian conglomerate.
This morning, financial news outlets like Moneycontrol and Business Today also reported that Adani Enterprises FPO has not seen much enthusiasm from investors with only 1% subscription.
For a group which has seen such a massive decline in a span of few days, full front page ads in major newspapers of the country can be seen as a PR exercise to assuage rapidly spreading doubts about its business practices, or shore up public sentiment for its FPO.
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