Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy resign: What is happening at NDTV

NDTV; Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy resigned as directors of RRPR Holding Private Limited. This company is the vehicle

By Ground report 30 Nov 2022

New Update

Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy resign: What is happening at NDTV

Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy resigned as directors of RRPR Holding Private Limited. This company is the vehicle of the promoting group of NDTV.

In a letter written to the Bombay Stock Exchange on Tuesday, NDTV said: "NDTV's promoter group RRPR (Radhika Roy Prannoy Roy) Holding Pvt. Ltd. informed that it was decided at today's Board of Directors meeting, November 29, that Sudipta Bhattacharya, Sanjay Puglia and Senthil Chengalvarayan will be the new directors of the RRPR Board with immediate effect and Dr. Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy have resigned from the RRPR Board of Directors with immediate effect."

It is important to know that all of these changes have taken place within the NDTV promoter group company, although according to NDTV, Prannoy Roy and his wife Radhika Roy are the co-CEOs of NDTV.

This decision has been taken when just one day before, RRPR Holding Pvt Ltd had given information about its shares. Of which, 99.5% of the capital shares belong to Vishwa Pradhan Commercial Private Limited, a company that has been acquired by AMGMedia Networks, the media company of Adani Group. With this, Adani Group now has a 29.18% stake in NDTV.

Adani Group has come up with an open offer for an additional 26% stake, under which the company has taken the initiative to buy one crore 67 lakh shares of NDTV. The last date of the open offer is 5th November.

What is Adani's plan?

Doing business in many areas ranging from ports, airports, and infrastructure and Asia's richest Gautam Adani surprised the media by making a big and famous acquisition in the past. Some people called it a hostile takeover, an attempt to take over the company against the will of NDTV management.

However, Gautam Adani had recently said of the NDTV deal in an interview given to the Financial Times: "There is no channel in India that can compete with the Financial Times. Why not support a media house and make it independent, which has a global reach? Independent means that if the government has done something bad, it must be called bad, but it must also have the courage to say it openly when the government is doing something good."

Adani said the cost of creating a global media conglomerate for his group was "too low" and offered NDTV chief Prannoy Roy to stay on.

NDTV takeover: where things are

The Roys directly own 32.36% of the company; Prannoy's share is 15.94% while Radhika has 16.32%. NDTV promoter Prannoy Roy holds a 15.94 per cent stake in the company, while his wife and Radhika Roy hold 16.32 per cent in the company. Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy were the promoters of RRPR, this company had 29.18% shares of NDTV. Adani Group now holds 99.5% of its shares.

Retail investors hold 12.57 per cent of the company's shares, corporate entities hold 9.61 per cent of NDTV, while foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) hold 14.7 per cent. Others hold 1.67 per cent stake in the company.