Goldman Sachs picks up stake in Adani Power, invests over $300 million

US investment bank Goldman Sachs has picked up a stake in the Adnani Powers Ltd, which sold shares worth $1 billion in a block deal.

The bank bought 103 million Adani Power shares for Rs 2,876 crore (over $300 million).

In total, Adani Powers sold 311 million shares in the firm on Wednesday at an average price of Rs 279.17 per share, which amounts to Rs 8.7 billion, according to data shared by the firm to the Indian stock exchange BSE.

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The news of heavy investment witnessed a strong buying of Adani Power shares by local investors. Adani Power's share opened upon Thursday (Aug 17) and went on to hit an intraday high of Rs 288.50 apiece on the National Stock Exchange, clocking over 3 per cent intraday rise during early morning deals.

Apart from Goldman Sachs, Rajiv Jain-led GQG bought 152 million shares at an average price of Rs 279.15 apiece in a series of secondary block transactions.

GQG invests in Adani

"The GQG investment in Adani Power is a landmark deal, that showcases another vertical in the emerging energy transition space in which Adani portfolio companies are playing a leading role.

"This transaction also highlights the vote of confidence of global investor in India’s new age and re-energised power sector that is being propelled by energy transition plan of Indian government," said GQG in a note.

GQG Partners is always known for taking contrarian bets and its assets under management are worth close to $100 billion.

It holds about $13 billion in Indian companies including ITC, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank and Housing Development Finance Corp (now merged with HDFC Bank).

Notably, the renewed interest on Adani Powers comes days after Qatar Investment Authority, a sovereign fund, picked up a 2.7 per cent stake in Adani Green Energy for Rs3.9 billion.

Recently, Deloitte quit as the auditor of Adani Ports, renewing investor concerns even as the group slowly recovers from a report by US short-seller Hindenburg Research, released in January.

The report, which alleged improper use of tax havens and concerns over the conglomerate's debt levels - something it denies - wiped out nearly $147 billion from the market cap of the group's listed entities.

Though shares of the group companies have rebounded, they are still down around $100 billion in value.

Adani Ports had said that Deloitte's reason for quitting as its auditor was not convincing or sufficient to warrant such a move.

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