Meet Rajiv Jain, The Asset Management Billionaire Backing The Embattled Adani Group

Meet Rajiv Jain, The Asset Management Billionaire Backing The Embattled Adani Group

Post By World Adani Enterprises, Adani group, Bernie Sanders, Gautam Adani, Goldman Sachs, GQG Partners, hillary clinton, india, Rajiv Jain, Vinod Adani

Rajiv Jain, founder, chairman and chief investment officer of GQG Partners.

The founder of Fort Lauderdale-based GQG Partners is known for making large investments in old-school industries like oil and tobacco. His latest bet—on the ports-to-power conglomerate Adani Group—might be his most daring yet.

On Thursday, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani finally got some good news. After weeks of cratering share prices in the publicly traded firms in his Adani Group conglomerate—largely caused by the release of U.S. short-seller Hindenburg Research’s scathing report on January 24—the group announced a $1.9 billion investment in four of its public companies. The deal led to a stock rally that boosted Gautam Adani’s net worth by $3.8 billion to $42.7 billion on Friday, yet still a long way from his peak of $158 billion last September.

The man behind that deal is Rajiv Jain, the founder, chairman and chief investment officer of Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based asset management firm GQG Partners. Like Adani, he’s also a billionaire. According to GQG’s filings on the Australian Stock Exchange, where it went public in October 2021, Jain owns 69% of the company—a stake worth roughly $2 billion. A spokesperson for GQG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jain founded GQG in 2016 and has grown it to $92 billion in assets under management, with several funds that hold large positions in oil producers ExxonMobil and Petrobras, as well as tobacco giants Philip Morris and British American Tobacco. If it weren’t for the recent market rout in Adani Group companies, his bet on a ports-to-power conglomerate wouldn’t seem out of place among the other firms that GQG typically invests in.

GQG purchased stakes in four Adani companies: Adani Ports, Adani Green Energy, Adani Transmission and Adani Enterprises, according to a statement from Adani Group. All four stocks rallied on Friday after the deal was announced, with the flagship Adani Enterprises rising 17%, a stark contrast from weeks of stock price declines driven by the Hindenburg report. Jain’s firm invested in the Adani companies on behalf of various pension funds and institutional clients, including nearly $480 million through its Goldman Sachs GQG Partners International Opportunities Fund, a $25 billion (assets under management) fund that GQG manages on behalf of Goldman Sachs’ asset management arm

“I am excited to have initiated positions in the Adani companies. Adani companies own and operate some of the largest and most important infrastructure assets throughout India and around the world,” Jain said in a statement announcing the deal. “Gautam Adani is widely regarded as among the best entrepreneurs of his generation.”

On Wednesday, India’s supreme court asked the country’s stock market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), to open an investigation into the Adani Group to look into allegations of stock manipulation and failures to disclose transactions with related parties. Forbes previously reported on several transactions involving offshore funds in Singapore and Cyprus with ties to Vinod Adani, Gautam’s elder brother, that appear designed to benefit the Adani Group and lend further credence to Hindenburg’s allegations of hidden leverage and accounting irregularities within the Adani Group.

The Adani Group has denied all wrongdoing. “The Adani Group welcomes the order of the honorable Supreme Court,” Gautam Adani said in a tweet on Thursday. “It will bring finality in a time bound manner. Truth will prevail.”

Born in India, Jain studied accounting at the University of Ajmer in the Indian state of Rajasthan, getting a master’s degree in the same field before leaving to pursue an M.B.A. in finance and international business at the University of Miami. He then worked as an international equity analyst at Swiss Bank Corporation before leaving to join Swiss asset manager Vontobel in November 1994, as a co-portfolio manager of emerging markets and international equities. Several promotions later, he became Vontobel’s chief investment officer in 2002 and was later tapped as co-CEO in 2014. During his time at Vontobel, he helped grow the firm’s assets under management from less than $400 million to nearly $50 billion.

Two years later, he left Vontobel to start GQG Partners in Florida. At GQG, he’s become known for focusing on companies’ earnings rather than following the hottest trends in the market—a fact borne out by his funds’ large positions in energy, mining, tobacco, consumer goods, healthcare and banking. (The only tech company Forbes identified in GQG’s fund disclosures was Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC.)

“We believe earnings drive stock prices, the market offers very limited opportunities to create an information advantage, and investors are disproportionately focused on the short term,” Jain said in a July 2022 interview with Toronto-based Bridgehouse Asset Managers. “Our core valuation philosophy creates an investment style that we describe as buying high-quality, sustainable businesses at reasonable prices.”

With GQG’s $1.9 billion investment, Jain has wagered that despite Hindenburg’s allegations of stock manipulation and accounting fraud—which the Adani Group has denied—the Adani firms are a good bet, at a far lower price than their peak last year. “We believe that the long-term growth prospects for [the Adani] companies are substantial,” Jain added in the deal announcement.

Besides its bet on the Adani Group, GQG also invests in several other Indian companies: 22% of its $9.9 billion emerging markets equity fund is invested in Indian companies. Those include Mukesh Ambani‘s Reliance conglomerate and the State Bank of India, as well as housing finance provider Housing Development Finance Corp, ICICI Bank and Kolkata-based conglomerate ITC. And at least five GQG funds hold positions in French energy major TotalEnergies, which owns a 37.4% stake in Adani Total Gas and a 20% stake in Adani Green Energy—which, as Forbes previously reported, was acquired from Mauritius-based firms controlled by Vinod Adani for $2 billion in 2021. (The price rally spurred by GQG’s investment in the Adani companies lifted Vinod’s estimated net worth by 12% to roughly $9 billion.)

Outside of his investments, Jain has also backed Democrats in the U.S. Forbes found that Jain contributed $81,600 to Democratic presidential and congressional candidates between 2012 and 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records. In the 2016 primaries, Jain decided to hedge his bets: he donated $2,700 to Hillary Clinton and $1,000 to Bernie Sanders.

Additional reporting by John Hyatt.

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Meet Rajiv Jain, The Asset Management Billionaire Backing The Embattled Adani Group

Post By World Adani Enterprises, Adani group, Bernie Sanders, Gautam Adani, Goldman Sachs, GQG Partners, hillary clinton, india, Rajiv Jain, Vinod Adani

Rajiv Jain, founder, chairman and chief investment officer of GQG Partners.

The founder of Fort Lauderdale-based GQG Partners is known for making large investments in old-school industries like oil and tobacco. His latest bet—on the ports-to-power conglomerate Adani Group—might be his most daring yet.

Besides its bet on the Adani Group, GQG also invests in several other Indian companies: 34% of its $9.9 billion emerging markets equity fund is invested in India, more than any other country. Those include Mukesh Ambani‘s Reliance conglomerate and the State Bank of India, as well as housing finance provider Housing Development Finance Corp, ICICI Bank and Kolkata-based conglomerate ITC. And at least five GQG funds hold positions in French energy major TotalEnergies, which owns a 37.4% stake in Adani Total Gas and a 20% stake in Adani Green Energy—which, as Forbes previously reported, was acquired from Mauritius-based firms controlled by Vinod Adani for $2 billion in 2021. (The price rally spurred by GQG’s investment in the Adani companies lifted Vinod’s estimated net worth by 12% to roughly $9 billion.)

Additional reporting by John Hyatt.

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Exclusive: New Investigation Reveals Gautam Adani’s Older Brother As Key Player In Adani Group’s Biggest Deals

Post By World Adani Enterprises, Adani group, billionaires, Gautam Adani, Hindenburg, india, Mauritius, total, totalenergies, Vinod Adani

While Gautam Adani’s net worth has fallen by more than $90 billion since Hindenburg released its report on January 24, Forbes found that his brother Vinod has a $6 billion fortune of his own.

Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg

Vinod Adani was at the heart of two massive Adani Group deals with French energy giant TotalEnergies, according to Indian filings. Forbes also found that Vinod is nearly five times richer than previously known.

_By_{Giacomo Tognini}_and_{John Hyatt}_{, Forbes Staff}

In early 2021, Gautam Adani scored a big win. Adani Green Energy, one of eight publicly traded firms controlled by his Adani Group conglomerate, agreed to sell a 20% stake to French oil firm TotalEnergies. “We have a shared vision of developing renewable power at affordable prices,” said Adani at the time.

The deal was also a coup for TotalEnergies, now the world’s fifth-largest energy company by market capitalization. It paid $2 billion for Adani Green Energy shares that, on India’s stock exchange, were worth about $4.1 billion. As part of the deal, TotalEnergies also spent $510 million on a joint solar venture with the Adani Group.

“It’s a win-win situation for both companies,” says Haran Segram, an adjunct finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and Columbia Business School. In return for a “bargain” priced slice of Adani Green, TotalEnergies improved the Adani Group’s standing with foreign investors. “A European multinational oil company investing gives a lot of credibility for Adani Group,” says Segram.

Beyond being a good deal, the transaction was unique for another reason: its unconventional structuring. Rather than directly buying the shares, TotalEnergies acquired two Mauritius-incorporated funds (which held the stock) from a third Mauritius entity, Dome Trade and Investment Limited, according to Indian financial filings.

It turns out that Dome Trade’s ultimate owner—through a web of entities in Mauritius, the United Arab Emirates and the British Virgin Islands—is Vinod Adani, Gautam’s older brother, whose offshore entanglements with the Adani Group Forbes unraveled earlier this month. While 60-year-old Gautam is the Adani Group’s public face, it’s Vinod and his offshore companies that are facilitating some of the family conglomerate’s biggest deals, including two transactions with TotalEnergies, the company’s largest European partner—and, at least until recently, one that helped give the Adani Group credibility with Western financial institutions and investors.

In its bombshell 100-page report last month, U.S. short seller Hindenburg Research alleged that 74-year-old Vinod, who holds no formal position within the Adani Group, is a central figure in the company’s alleged accounting fraud and stock market manipulation. The Adani Group has denied all wrongdoing. The company and Vinod Adani did not respond to a request for comment. The company insists in a 413-page response to Hindenburg Research that Vinod “has no role in [the] day to day affairs” of the Adani Group’s businesses.

By April 2022, TotalEnergies’ $2 billion investment in Adani Green Energy had ballooned to over $11 billion in value as the share price soared. But now, the French company is sitting on a loss. Its shares are worth just $1.7 billion—down from $7.3 billion at the start of the year—due to the Hindenburg-driven rout in Adani Group shares.

One reason the Adani Group and Vinod may have wanted to sell TotalEnergies their Mauritius-based funds, rather than the Adani Green Energy shares themselves, was to minimize taxes, says Aswath Damodaran, a professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business. In Mauritius, where there are no capital gains taxes, Indian nationals and companies have long parked assets as a way to “wash their capital gains and not have to pay taxes,” says Damodaran.

The structure of the deal also suggests tax benefits for TotalEnergies. Absent tax benefits, “It doesn’t make sense for [Total] as a company,” says Damodaran. “It creates a layer between [them] and [their] holding.”

Another possibility, says Mark Humphery-Jenner, an associate professor of finance at University of New South Wales Business School, is that both parties were wary of crashing Adani Green’s share price, given its low float. “The Mauritius funds—and Vinod Adani—might have wanted to exit but realized that if they sold in the open market, they would collapse Adani Green’s price. Therefore, a block trade via TotalEnergies would be a better option for Adani Green, and Vinod Adani,” says Humphery-Jenner.

A spokesperson for TotalEnergies told Forbes that “the purchase price of $2 billion (as disclosed in the public domain) was a reflection of the historical average share price of [Adani Green Energy] at the time of the negotiation and the fact that TotalEnergies was acquiring a non-controlling interest” and that “these transactions were negotiated between both TotalEnergies’ and Adani’s M&A and management teams.”

“We welcome the independent assessment that is being organized and we look forward to its results as well as the conclusions of investigations of the relevant Indian authorities,” the TotalEnergies spokesperson added.

Forbes found that the price that TotalEnergies paid for the Adani Green Energy shares on January 21, 2021—the day the deal closed—was 8% lower than the average price of the shares over the previous year and 62% lower than the average over the previous six months.

Vinod was also involved in the Adani Group’s first deal with TotalEnergies. The French group agreed to buy a 37.4% stake in publicly traded natural gas firm Adani Gas in October 2019. The deal closed in February 2020, with TotalEnergies paying $714 million, or $50 million less than the open market valued them at the time. Unlike the Adani Green Energy deal, TotalEnergies bought those shares directly from six different Adani-controlled entities, according to Adani Gas’ 2020 annual report. Four of those were Mauritius-based funds owned by Vinod; the others were an Indian company, owned by Vinod, Gautam and their brother Rajesh, and a trust, of which the three brothers are beneficiaries and trustees. It has also been a much better investment than Adani Green Energy: that stake is up five-fold, now worth $3.6 billion.

In a third deal, TotalEnergies bought a 25% stake in Adani New Industries Ltd.—a green hydrogen subsidiary of the conglomerate’s flagship Adani Enterprises—for an undisclosed sum last summer. Vinod’s involvement in that deal could not be confirmed, although he is a significant shareholder in Adani Enterprises. The deal “further strengthens our alliance with the Adani Group in India,” Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies, said at the time. That project was put on ice following Hindenburg’s report: “Obviously, the hydrogen project, which was discussed, will be put on hold as long as we don’t have clarity,” Pouyanné said in a February 8 earnings call.

Vinod also participated in the Adani Group’s $6.5 billion acquisition of Swiss firm Holcim’s stakes in Indian cement producers Ambuja Cements and ACC last September. His Mauritius-based company Endeavor Trade and Investment Limited purchased a 63% stake in Ambuja and 57% stake in ACC. A month later, in October, Vinod used another Mauritius entity he controls—Harmonia Trade and Investment Limited—to inject some $600 million into Ambuja by purchasing warrants that convert to shares. According to the filing, Harmonia will have to pay another $1.8 billion to Ambuja when it converts those warrants to shares, which would then give Harmonia a 19.4% stake in Ambuja—bringing Vinod’s overall stake in the cement maker to 70.3%.

Given these revelations, Vinod is much wealthier than previously thought. Forbes found that he owns eight Mauritius-based firms that hold $12.3 billion of shares in Adani Group companies, plus Ambuja and ACC. Accounting for pledged shares plus the cost to buy the cement companies, Forbes estimates that Vinod is worth at least $6 billion, up from our previous estimate of $1.3 billion published less than two weeks ago. Forbes previously attributed the value of those shares to Gautam; his revised net worth is now $33.4 billion—a sharp fall from his peak of $158 billion last September, when he was the world’s third-richest person. (As of Monday evening New York time, Gautam was the world’s 38th richest, per Forbes.)

It’s likely that Vinod holds even more shares in Adani companies through opaque entities he co-owns with his brothers. The largest shareholder in the Adani Group’s publicly traded companies is the S.B. Adani Family Trust, which Forbes attributes to Gautam. But Indian financial filings show that Vinod and three other Adani brothers—Rajesh, Mahasukh and Vasant—are also beneficiaries of the trust alongside Gautam, with Gautam, Rajesh and Vinod acting as trustees. There are another two companies—Adani Trading Services LLP and Adani Tradeline Private Limited—that also own shares in public Adani firms, which Forbes attributes to Gautam. According to Indian stock exchange filings, however, Gautam shares ownership of the two entities with Vinod and Rajesh. (The exact ownership breakdown of the S.B. Family Trust, Adani Trading Services and Adani Tradeline remains unclear.)

Vinod also has a private real estate empire in Dubai, where he’s lived since 1994. According to Dubai property records, Vinod owns 37 residential and commercial properties worth an estimated $17 million in the emirate, including a 2,700-square-foot villa in the Burj Khalifa, the tallest tower in the world. The data, which dates from 2020, was obtained by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that researches international crime and conflict. It was then shared with Norwegian financial outlet E24, which coordinated an investigation into the real estate.

The Dubai records also show that Vinod holds an Indian passport issued in 2013 and expiring in 2026—a detail that seemingly contradicts Adani public filings describing him as a citizen of Cyprus, since India doesn’t allow dual citizenship. A spokesperson for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Meet Rajiv Jain, The Asset Management Billionaire Backing The Embattled Adani Group

The founder of Fort Lauderdale-based GQG Partners is known for making large investments in old-school industries like oil and tobacco. His latest bet—on the ports-to-power conglomerate Adani Group—might be his most daring yet.

Meet Rajiv Jain, The Asset Management Billionaire Backing The Embattled Adani Group

The founder of Fort Lauderdale-based GQG Partners is known for making large investments in old-school industries like oil and tobacco. His latest bet—on the ports-to-power conglomerate Adani Group—might be his most daring yet.

Exclusive: New Investigation Reveals Gautam Adani’s Older Brother As Key Player In Adani Group’s Biggest Deals

Vinod Adani was at the heart of two massive Adani Group deals with French energy giant TotalEnergies, according to Indian filings. Forbes also found that Vinod is nearly five times richer than previously known.

_By_{Giacomo Tognini}_and_{John Hyatt}_{, Forbes Staff}

MORE FROM FORBES

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The founder of Fort Lauderdale-based GQG Partners is known for making large investments in old-school industries like oil and tobacco. His latest bet—on the ports-to-power conglomerate Adani Group—might be his most daring yet.

The founder of Fort Lauderdale-based GQG Partners is known for making large investments in old-school industries like oil and tobacco. His latest bet—on the ports-to-power conglomerate Adani Group—might be his most daring yet.

Vinod Adani was at the heart of two massive Adani Group deals with French energy giant TotalEnergies, according to Indian filings. Forbes also found that Vinod is nearly five times richer than previously known.

By Giacomo Tognini and John Hyatt, Forbes Staff

MORE FROM FORBES

_By_{Giacomo Tognini}_and_{John Hyatt}_{, Forbes Staff}