BT (BT-A.L)

Bharti Enterprises, an India-based conglomerate headed by billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal, has agreed to buy a 24.5% stake in BT Group from Patrick Drahi’s Altice. BT’s share price surged as much as 6.4% in early trading.

Bharti said it has entered into a binding agreement with Altice to buy 10% of BT’s shares immediately, with the remainder coming on “receipt of acceptable regulatory clearances”.

Bharti said it supported BT’s executive team and strategy, and did not intend to make an offer for the entire company. It did not say how much it would pay for the stake. At Friday’s closing price, Altice’s 24.5% stake was worth about ￡3.2bn ($4bn).

Bharti Global said the investment is “a vote of confidence in the UK as an attractive global destination for investment, with a stable business and policy environment attractive for long-term investors”.

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Altice, which is controlled by French-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi, had upped its stake in BT in recent years, and had already faced a national security probe in 2022.

Founded by Mittal in 1976, Bharti Global is one of India’s largest conglomerates, with interests in telecoms, media, space and other sectors. Mittal, 66, is the company’s chairman.

Adani (ADANIENT.NS)

Stocks in Adani Enterprises slumped by over 7% after the US short-seller Hindenburg Research alleged that the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch and her husband had undisclosed investments in an offshore fund structure used by Vinod Adani, brother of Adani Group founder Gautam Adani.

The report suggests that SEBI’s lack of action against the Adani Group, despite evidence of fraudulent practices, could be due to Buch’s involvement in these funds.

“Madhabi Buch and her husband had stakes in a multi-layered offshore fund structure with minuscule assets, traversing known high-risk jurisdictions, overseen by a company with reported ties to the Wirecard scandal, in the same entity run by an Adani director and significantly used by Vinod Adani in the alleged Adani cash siphoning scandal,” the report added, according to local media.

Hindenburg Research has called for further investigation into these allegations. The firm has pledged to donate any proceeds derived from the report to causes that support free expression.

SEBI has yet to make public findings from several long-running probes into the Adani Group after India’s Supreme Court in January ordered it to wind up the investigations within three months.