Merely hours after a Fitch Group unit, CreditSights, came up with a report that called the Adani Group “deeply overleveraged” and that the group’s “overly ambitious debt-funded growth plans could… spiral into a massive debt trap”, the Adani Group, in an unrelated press release, said it had made a bid to take over NDTV by first indirectly acquiring a 29.18% stake and then by making an open offer for another 26% ownership stake in the media entity.
NDTV is one of India’s most well-known media brands, with its flagship NDTV 24/7 being a pioneer of sorts in the English television news space, its website NDTV.com being among the most read English news websites and some of its current and erstwhile anchors being well recognised public figures. In a survey published in the recent Reuters Institute Digital News Report for 2022 — whose respondents were mainly English-speaking online news users in India — NDTV online polled the highest weekly usage, and while 24-hour TV news channels were perceived by survey respondents as being less-well-trusted compared with print counterparts, NDTV ranked the highest among Indian TV outlets.
It’s ironic that CreditSights’ warning for the Adani Group that a debt trap could leave some of its companies in distress was exactly how a similar situation played out for the media entity after a series of financial transactions made by the promoters of NDTV led the company into the financial doldrums in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
