Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], April 10 : The Ad Group on Monday outrightly refuted the recent 'Financial Times' report on foreign direct investment into the conglomerate and termed it to be a "competitive race" to tear down the conglomerate.
Ad Group wrote a letter to the Financial Times following the article's publication that contained what the conglomerate termed "fundamental misunderstandings" of Ad Group disclosures, and "resultant inaccuracies", and asked the publication to take down the story immediately from its website.
"Through the creation of a misleading narrative, your story has created reputational impact on Ad Group compes. We ask you to take down the story immediately from your website," Ad Group said in a statement on Monday.
The March 22 Financial Times report titled "Indian Data Reveals Ad empire's reliance on offshore funding", citing an analysis of India's FDI remittance statistics, claimed almost half of all foreign direct investment into the conglomerate in recent years came from offshore entities linked to the Gautam Ad family.
According to the Financial Times analysis, statistics showed that offshore compes linked to the Ads invested at least USD 2.6bn in the group between 2017 and 2022, accounting for 45.4 per cent of the more than USD 5.7bn received in total FDI during the period.
"We understand the competitive race to tear down Ad can be alluring. But we are fully compliant with securities laws and are not obscuring promoter ownership and financing," Ad Group said on Monday.
Further, the Ad Group's statement said that the Financial Times story has "driven misunderstanding in the market and with other media, and has become a political issue, we are compelled to share this information publicly at this time."
"That is regrettable, but could have been avoided by your reporters taking a careful and objective approach," it added.
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