Adani tops DHFL bid with ₹33,000 crore offer

Billionaire Gautam Adani’s roads-to-mining group outbid U.S.-based Oaktree with a ₹33,000 crore bid for collapsed housing lender, DHFL. However, rival bidders want it out of the race for allegedly missing the deadline, a charge Adani Group denies saying it followed due process and the ‘cartel’ wants to prevent value maximisation.

Four entities — Adani Group, Piramal Group, Oaktree Capital Management and SC Lowy — submitted bids for DHFL in October, sources with DHFL’s lenders and the industry said.

But lenders, who are getting DHFL auctioned to recover unpaid loans, wanted suitors to revise their bids as original offers were low.

Adani Group, which had initially bid only for DHFL’s wholesale and Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) portfolio, in the revised offer submitted on November 17, bid for the entire book, offering a total of ₹30,000 crore plus interest of ₹3,000 cror, a lending source said.

Piramal quoted ₹23,500 crore only for the retail portfolio of DHFL, while Hong Kong-based SC Lowy bid ₹2,350 crore for SRA.