New Delhi: The Adani Group is in talks with lenders, including global banks, to refinance up to $3.8 billion of a loan facility taken for its acquisition of Ambuja Cements Ltd last year, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.Banks such as Barclays Plc, Deutsche Bank AG, Standard Chartered Plc and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. are in talks to participate in the refinancing deal, the report said.The Bloomberg report also mentioned that the deal is not yet finalised and may not proceed.However, if the plan moves ahead, it would be Adani Group’s first major debt refinancing deal, and a sign of the conglomerate returning to business-as-usual, after US-based short seller Hindenburg Research’s report halved the group’s market value.The company is mulling whether to convert the original loan taken for the cement deal into debt with a longer maturity period. Therefore, it has started talking to banks individually about that plan, the people, who asked not to be identified as the discussions are private, told Bloomberg.Refinancing involves the re-evaluation of a business’s credit and repayment status. To refinance debt, a borrower must approach either their existing lender or a new one with the request and file a new loan application.In Adani Group’s case, most of the existing lenders are expected to participate, the people cited above told Bloomberg.The conglomerate is expecting to conclude the process within three to four months, the report added.It will also be seen whether global banks open up their credit lines to the conglomerate after the Hindenburg saga.Also read: Why Has the Adani-Hindenburg Issue Become a Matter of National Concern?The Adani investigationThe short-seller’s main charge is that it has traced entities in tax havens, “which held huge stakes in listed Adani firms, and were related to Gautam Adani’s brother, Vinod.” But as “these facts were not disclosed. In effect, the promoters’ stakes in several listed firms exceeded the legal limit of 75%.”If investigations find that these entities are related to Adani, it could spell trouble for the Adani Group.A Supreme Court expert committee, part of which dealt with the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) probe into allegations against the Adani Group by Hindenburg Research, said that because of repealed provisions on ‘opaque structure’ of FPIs that invested in the group, SEBI drew a blank in this case.This is significant because these FPIs, or offshore funds, have unknown ultimate beneficiaries. “If you remove these [offshore] funds, the effective [public] shareholding in Adani Enterprises comes down to only 10%,” the Morning Context had reported in its analysis of Adani’s public shareholding. In Adani Transmission, the “effective public float is about 7-8%,” the report had said.According to SEBI rules, listed companies are required to maintain a minimum public holding of 25%.Bloomberg columnist Andy Mukherjee had in September 2022 written about these “silent soldiers”, or “Adani’s fortune drivers”, and that “they deserve some scrutiny”.Note that stock exchanges froze the promoter shareholding of Patanjali Foods after the company failed to meet the 25% public shareholding.
