Adani hires banks to hold investor calls amid debt turmoil

By Priscila Azevedo Rocha, Caleb Mutua and Michael Gambale

Adani Group will kick off calls with bondholders Thursday as the beleaguered conglomerate seeks to reassure investors following a plunge in the price of its debt.

Banks are setting up meetings with fixed-income investors over the next week on behalf of Adani Group, Adani Green Energy Ltd. and Adani Transmission. The calls are scheduled for Feb. 16 and Feb. 21, according to a person familiar with the matter. Barclays Plc, BNP Paribas SA, DBS Bank Ltd, Deutsche Bank AG, Emirates NBD Capital, ING Groep N.V., MUFG, Mizuho, SMBC Nikko and Standard Chartered Bank are organizing the calls, said the person.

It’s unclear what will be discussed during the meetings, but attention has shifted toward the debt pile of Adani Group companies. A bruising report from short seller Hindenburg Research wiped out more than $120 billion of the empire’s market value, while yields on its bonds have soared to double-digits, increasing the cost of borrowing for the company.

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At least 200 financial institutions around the world — including the likes of BlackRock Inc., the world’s biggest asset manager — have had exposure to Adani Group’s $8 billion in dollar bonds, most of which slid into distress after Hindenburg’s fraud allegations unleashed financial turmoil.

Credit: bloomberg Photo

The long list of funds with exposure to Adani’s debt underscores how much demand there was to invest in the group before the short-seller report caused its stocks and bonds to tumble. To restore confidence in the conglomerate’s financial health, billionaire Gautam Adani is in talks with creditors to prepay some loans backed by pledged shares.

His flagship firm, Adani Enterprises Ltd., based in the tycoon’s home city of Ahmedabad in western India, posted on Tuesday net income of 8.2 billion rupees ($99.1 million) for the quarter ended Dec. 31, compared with a loss of 116.3 million rupees in the same period last year.

Adani Group companies said in a stock exchange filing that it faces no material refinancing risk and there is no near-term liquidity requirement. The company also has no significant debt maturing in the near term.

There weren’t enough brokerages tracking the company to derive an average profit forecast.