Rajiv Jain, founder, chairman and chief investment officer of GQG Associates.
© 2017 Bloomberg Finance LP
The founder of Fort Lauderdale-based mostly GQG Associates is known for creating large investments in aged-university industries like oil and tobacco. His most recent bet—on the ports-to-energy conglomerate Adani Group—might be his most daring still.
On Thursday, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani finally got some great information. Soon after months of cratering share charges in the publicly traded companies in his Adani Team conglomerate—largely induced by the release of U.S. quick-vendor Hindenburg Research’s scathing report on January 24—the team introduced a $1.9 billion financial commitment in four of its public organizations. The offer led to a stock rally that boosted Gautam Adani’s web really worth by $3.8 billion to $42.7 billion on Friday, yet even now a lengthy way from his peak of $158 billion past September.
The gentleman driving that deal is Rajiv Jain, the 55-yr-old founder, chairman and main expenditure officer of Fort Lauderdale, Florida-centered asset management agency GQG Companions. Like Adani, he’s also a billionaire. According to GQG’s filings on the Australian Inventory Exchange, wherever it went community in October 2021, Jain owns 69% of the company—a stake really worth about $2 billion. A spokesperson for GQG did not straight away answer to a ask for for comment.
Jain launched GQG in 2016 and has grown it to $92 billion in property under management, with several resources that keep significant positions in oil producers ExxonMobil and Petrobras, as perfectly as tobacco giants Philip Morris and British American Tobacco. If it weren’t for the recent industry rout in Adani Group providers, his bet on a ports-to-electricity conglomerate wouldn’t appear to be out of area between the other firms that GQG typically invests in.
GQG bought stakes in four Adani companies: Adani Ports, Adani Green Power, Adani Transmission and Adani Enterprises, according to a assertion from Adani Group. All 4 stocks rallied on Friday after the deal was declared, with the flagship Adani Enterprises increasing 17%, a stark distinction from months of stock rate declines driven by the Hindenburg report. Jain’s firm invested in the Adani organizations on behalf of many pension resources and institutional clientele, such as practically $480 million by its Goldman Sachs GQG Companions Intercontinental Chances Fund, a $25 billion (belongings below administration) fund that GQG manages on behalf of Goldman Sachs’ asset management arm
“I am excited to have initiated positions in the Adani organizations. Adani companies very own and function some of the biggest and most crucial infrastructure belongings all over India and about the environment,” Jain claimed in a assertion saying the offer. “Gautam Adani is widely regarded as among the very best business owners of his generation.”
On Wednesday, India’s supreme courtroom questioned the country’s stock market place regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), to open up an investigation into the Adani Team to glimpse into allegations of inventory manipulation and failures to disclose transactions with associated get-togethers. Forbes formerly claimed on many transactions involving offshore money in Singapore and Cyprus with ties to Vinod Adani, Gautam’s elder brother, that surface built to gain the Adani Group and lend even further credence to Hindenburg’s allegations of concealed leverage and accounting irregularities within just the Adani Team.
The Adani Group has denied all wrongdoing. “The Adani Group welcomes the get of the honorable Supreme Court docket,” Gautam Adani explained in a tweet on Thursday. “It will deliver finality in a time bound method. Fact will prevail.”
Born in India, Jain analyzed accounting at Panjab University in the Indian town of Chandigarh and later on acquired a master’s in finance at the University of Ajmer, in advance of leaving to pursue an M.B.A. in finance and intercontinental organization at the College of Miami. He then worked as an intercontinental equity analyst at Swiss Lender Company prior to leaving to be part of Swiss asset manager Vontobel in November 1994, as a co-portfolio manager of emerging marketplaces and worldwide equities. Several promotions later on, he turned Vontobel’s chief expense officer in 2002 and was later tapped as co-CEO in 2014. Through his time at Vontobel, he aided increase the firm’s assets below management from less than $400 million to nearly $50 billion.
Two yrs afterwards, he left Vontobel to begin GQG Partners in Florida. At GQG, he’s grow to be regarded for concentrating on companies’ earnings alternatively than following the best traits in the market—a point borne out by his funds’ large positions in electricity, mining, tobacco, shopper products, healthcare and banking. (The only tech company Forbes identified in GQG’s fund disclosures was Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC.)
“We believe that earnings generate inventory charges, the market gives incredibly constrained alternatives to generate an information benefit, and buyers are disproportionately focused on the small time period,” Jain said in a July 2022 interview with Toronto-dependent Bridgehouse Asset Professionals. “Our core valuation philosophy creates an financial investment design that we explain as buying superior-good quality, sustainable corporations at realistic charges.”
With GQG’s $1.9 billion investment decision, Jain has wagered that irrespective of Hindenburg’s allegations of inventory manipulation and accounting fraud—which the Adani Team has denied—the Adani corporations are a excellent bet, at a much reduced price than their peak past 12 months. “We imagine that the very long-phrase expansion potential clients for [the Adani] companies are significant,” Jain extra in the deal announcement.
Moreover its wager on the Adani Group, GQG also invests in a number of other Indian providers: 34% of its $9.9 billion emerging marketplaces fairness fund is invested in India, a lot more than any other place. Those people involve Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance conglomerate and the State Financial institution of India, as effectively as housing finance provider Housing Improvement Finance Corp, ICICI Bank and Kolkata-dependent conglomerate ITC. And at the very least five GQG funds keep positions in French electricity key TotalEnergies, which owns a 37.4% stake in Adani Full Gasoline and a 20% stake in Adani Eco-friendly Energy—which, as Forbes beforehand documented, was acquired from Mauritius-centered firms managed by Vinod Adani for $2 billion in 2021. (The selling price rally spurred by GQG’s expense in the Adani organizations lifted Vinod’s approximated net worthy of by 12% to about $9 billion.)
Outdoors of his investments, Jain has also backed Democrats in the U.S. Forbes located that Jain contributed $81,600 to Democratic presidential and congressional candidates concerning 2012 and 2016, in accordance to Federal Election Fee records. In the 2016 primaries, Jain resolved to hedge his bets: he donated $2,700 to Hillary Clinton and $1,000 to Bernie Sanders.
More reporting by John Hyatt.
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