Adani Group gets go-ahead from banks to refinance debt of $3.5 bn taken to buy Ambuja Cements: Report

Billionaire Gautam Adani-led Adani Group has reportedly got an approval from a group of banks for a syndicated loan of about $3.5 billion to refinance debt which it had taken to buy Ambuja Cements Ltd. 

Barclays Plc, Deutsche Bank AG and Standard Chartered Plc have agreed to lend about $250 million each towards the syndicated loan of about $3.5 billion to refinance Adani Group's debt, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday. This comes after several months of talks between the Gautam Adani-backed conglomerate and lenders.

In August-September 2022, the Adani Group borrowed $5.25 billion from 14 global banks to finance the acquisition of the two cement companies by buying out Switzerland-based Holcim’s stake. 

Earlier it was reported that the Adani Group is expected to repay at least $300 million on the original Ambuja facility. 

Last month Bloomberg had reported that around $400 million would be lent by DBS Group Holdings, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Mizuho Financial Group, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp each, while other banks would lend smaller amounts.

Shares of Ambuja Cements were trading at Rs 436.20,  up by 1.43 per cent, at 1.35 PM.  

In its recent annual report, Ambuja Cements said that it has incorporated three new wholly-owned subsidiaries on Friday. While two of those will deal in the cements business, one will be for owning and leasing of aircraft.

Two cement business-related subsidiaries incorporated are Ambuja Concrete North Pvt. Ltd. and Ambuja Concrete West Pvt. Ltd.

LOTIS IFSC Pvt. Ltd., involved in owning and leasing aircraft, has also been incorporated with an authorised capital of Rs 1.7 crore. The unit has been incorporated in GIFT City, Gandhinagar.

Ambuja Concrete North will carry on the business of manufacturing and dealing in Cement, RMX and other allied products and by-products. This has also been incorporated in the state of Gujarat.

Ambuja Concrete West will also be involved in the same line of business as Ambuja Concrete North, the company said in its report.

In August, Ambuja Cements acquired a 56.74 per cent stake in Saurashtra-based Sanghi Industries at an enterprise value of Rs 5,000 crore. Ambuja Cements will be funding the acquisition through internal accruals. The deal will be completed in the next 3-4 months.

Besides, the Adani Group company also entered into an inter-corporate deposit agreement with Sanghi Industries, under which it will provide an unsecured inter-corporate deposit worth Rs 300 crore to Sanghi, in one or more tranches for general corporate purposes.

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