Adani Group

Another dropout who turned billionaire.

The Adani group has interest spread across energy, food, beverages, ports, airports, mining, weapons, infrastructure.

I don't know what's left in an economy.

Yeah, you name it, he's got it.

And Gautam is the overall boss.

But the Adani group is run by a group of Adanis, including his brothers, nephews and his two sons.

Talk about keeping it in the family.

In 2024, Bloomberg editor Anto Antony highlighted Gautam's widespread influence in India, saying when you switch on the electric light bulb at home, his business is touching your life.

Similarly, there was NDTV where the promoter again had a bunch of debt and eventually got settled.

Now, the Adani Group has taken over that company.

So these are all somehow they were taking leverage for things, loans that they couldn't pay back.

Maybe it was a business loan that they couldn't and all that.

I'm stuck down here in Canberra, unfortunately.

I've got a job to do here, but my job here is to fight for those people back who I represent all through Queensland, but I take special interest in central Queensland, given where I'm from, and very proud of what we've achieved in the area in getting the Adani mine going.

I think you might be able to see that in the background.

I think there's a pineapple in the background.

I haven't thought of next week's story yet, but I have an idea.

You might have heard about the Adani Group, which is one of India's largest companies.

And at the end of last week, a group called the Hindenburg Group, which is a group that short-sell stocks, put out a 200-page document on what they call fraud.

And this is one of India's largest companies.

It lies with the family, which is neither good nor bad.

The family could be a good family or a bad family, but you're completely at the mercy of what the family decides to do.

So next week, I'm going to throw out the Adani group.

Maybe I'll have a post by then and then ask you, well, What would you do if you were a shareholder in a family group and you did not trust the family? So every week I'm going to pick something up in the news that week, throw it out there.

Right? And...

you know when we started marketing some of these companies the mf ownership was very very low very low right and i think it's a big shift right so and 2010 and keep coming back to this again and again so 2000 and 220 i think a lot of the guys assume that that 50p will remain 50p and consumer companies are you know the way to own and you know the free cash flows and quality who is going to invest for the next 10-15 years? Right? And look, Adani Group, for example, is a classic example.

Right? Completely shunned.

Right? And then now, almost all the mutual funds wants to own.

Or Reliance has done nothing, right? So in some sense.

But if you'd bought Adani, that's done well.

But both those companies may not necessarily fit to the governance patterns of international investors.

So you've got the AI theme internationally.

BlackRock stays, not because they're particularly, you know, they like Apple, but because they're index funds and you have the largest market cap companies.

The same reason the Adani Group is in BlackRock and Vanguard.

It's not like somebody in Pennsylvania said, oh, let's go buy the Adani Group.

It's this nice company.

It's an index fund.

I had zero interest in this group until the Hindenburg hit it.

And then I said, you know what? Somebody's got to talk about it.

And I valued the Adani Group.