Year 2024: What lies ahead for India’s leading family-owned conglomerates
₹20,000 crore in its flagship business, Adani Enterprises. That got pulled after a devastating report from Hindenburg Research, the US-based short seller. For a few weeks, all 10 listed Adani companies were hitting lower circuits, and soon, the shares of each company had crashed by more than 60%.
While the group denied all the allegations of stock manipulation and accounting fraud, as levelled by Hindenburg, the business started to pare down some of its debt. The group did this by the promoter selling shares in a few of the listed entities and selling majority shares in a few privately held ones (Bain Capital bought a majority stake in Adani Capital and Adani Housing Finance in July). Adani got a big vote for confidence from GQG Partners, which invested close to $2.6 billion across six public companies of the group.
Later in November, the group got a $550-million investment from International Development Finance, the finance arm of the US government, to build a port in Sri Lanka. As the year drew to a close, the group regained its mojo, and its shares showed a recovery. But the Hindenburg report did make Adani Group bring down its debt-to-ebitda ratio to a manageable level of 2.5 times at the end of September 2023 as against 3.3 times at the end of December 2022.
Significantly, Adani Group appears to be exiting from the non-infrastructure business—it is currently evaluating bids for its stake in the FMCG joint venture with Wilmar Group. Adani’s execution prowess will be tested fully by its ability to redevelop the Dharavi project, with the opposition expected to raise its ante on this politically sensitive topic to revamp Asia’s largest slums. Next year, the group could expand its infrastructure business (read airports
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