Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s conglomerate raised its stake in New Delhi Television Ltd to more than 37% through an open offer on Monday, making it the largest shareholder in one of the country’s most popular news networks. Although the Adani group wanted to acquire an additional 26% stake in NDTV, the open offer attracted bids for just 5.3 million shares, amounting to an 8.3% stake in the company. Last week, Adani acquired a stake of about 29.2% in NDTV by buying a company backed by the network’s founders Radhika Roy and Prannoy Roy, who hold a 32.3% stake in NDTV. The takeover of NDTV by a ports-to-energy conglomerate has raised concerns among some journalists that one of the country’s last bastions of free media is under threat.
Soon after the acquisition of NDTV’s founding entity Adani, Ravish Kumar, executive editor of NDTV, resigned. But Adani said it viewed the NDTV takeover as a “liability” rather than a business opportunity, adding that it had invited Prannoy Roy to stay on as chairman when the acquisition was completed. In the open offer, which closed on Monday, corporate investors offered 3.9 million shares, while retail investors offered to sell more than 706,000 shares. It was not immediately clear who the participants were.
Adani offered to buy NDTV shares at 294 rupees in an open offer, a 25% discount from Monday’s closing price. While a fully successful open offer would mean Adani would own a majority stake in NDTV, the 37.4% stake still makes it the single largest shareholder, said Shriram Subramanian, managing director of Bengaluru-based InGovern Research Services, a governance consultancy and corporate governance. “With the resulting share ownership, they (Adani) can still seek control of the board by reconstituting it. They can propose their own set of directors and recall the current directors,” said Subramanian.
Adani unveiled plans to acquire a majority stake in NDTV in late August, but faced stiff opposition from a news network that said the billionaire’s offer was made without any approval from NDTV’s founders. After a failed attempt to block the takeover citing regulatory restrictions on share transfers, the NDTV founder-backed entity transferred its entire stake to Adani last week.
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